


Diplomatic Relations

by cathedralvelvet



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: F/F, Futanari, Girl Penis, Netorare, Prostitution Roleplay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:22:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25066852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedralvelvet/pseuds/cathedralvelvet
Summary: When L'Arachel finally gets serious about courting Eirika after months spent wooing her, the depths of both their feelings catch both women by surprise.(L'Arachel has a dick.  NTR developments later in the story.  Dom/sub elements later in the story.  Lots of cum.)
Relationships: Eirika/L'Arachel (Fire Emblem), Eirika/L'Arachel (Fire Emblem/Marica | Marisa/Turner | Tana, Marica | Marisa/Turner | Tana
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	1. Gifts

It truly was a wonder that before the war -- before Eirika -- L'Arachel had never had occasion to visit places such as this: one of the foremost silversmiths in Rausten as a whole, and certainly the most esteemed in the city. She had never felt the need when it came to herself -- while she could see the value of ornamenting oneself, she had always assumed that such gaudy things would distract from her own beauty, which she had always had the fullest confidence in. It was who she was.    
  
No, jewelry had never been one of the princess’s passions -- until Eirika.    
  
“Let me see it,” she said as soon as the master of the shop pulled the fine-looking box from beneath the counter on her arrival. Her steps seemed to carry her further than usual, quicker than was normal for L’Arachel, and her hands were out for the box in almost the same instant that she had stepped close enough to the counter. Perhaps the master had been doing this for too long to be put off by pushy nobles -- or perhaps he’d just seen his fair share of overexcited young lovers. Either way, he showed no sign of offense at L’Arachel’s haste, nor at the way she very nearly ripped the box’s lid out of his grip.    
  
L'Arachel's breath caught in her throat at the sight of it. Wrought in silver, the pendant was heavier than she had imagined, even after bringing the large pink sapphire here straight from the jeweler's, weeks ago. She reached down with hands ever-so-slightly coated in sweat and took the work of art up between both. Even the chain felt slightly heavy to her. "It is...magnificent, sir," she said, looking down at the pendant even as she spoke. She only had eyes for the jewel in her hands.    
  
The master said something -- something that passed in one ear and out the other, L'Arachel was ashamed to admit, later. She wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention, wasn't giving him any mind. All her focus was on the gem, and the silver, and the vision that suddenly dominated her mind: Eirika, her pale , perfect skin graced by this, an ornament to her perfect, radiant beauty.    
  
L'Arachel had been waiting for this day for entirely too long. Longer than mere weeks. She wasn't sure what had put the idea in her head to give Eirika something more substantial than the usual trinkets that L'Arachel was already so free about giving away to the woman she so admired. Perhaps she had dreamed of it, one night. Or perhaps some bard's tale had put her in mind of the idea. Either way, L'Arachel had found herself wandering the merchant's quarter of Rausten on days when she had less to concern her than usual. They weren't exactly in peacetime, not yet -- the widespread menace of the Demon King's undead thralls still had to be dealt with, and L'Arachel was, of course, spearheading that effort -- but there finally were days when L'Arachel could live the life of, if not quite a carefree princess, at least one free to select her cares.    
  
And for her, Eirika had become central among them.    
  
It took L'Arachel some moments to realize just how long she had been standing there, staring down at the pink sapphire pendant and probably drooling -- gods forbid. She carefully set the pendant back in its box, accepted it and a handsome velvet drawstring bag with the master's thanks, and took her leave.    
  
The pendant's crafting had, of course, already been paid for.   
  
L'Arachel made her way back to the palace in a rush, unable to help herself as she occasionally broke into a run, as scandalous as it was for someone of her stature to comport herself in such a way. But gods, she was excited. She had dreamed -- literally dreamed -- of this moment for weeks. The pendant felt ten times heavier than it should have, as she made her hurried way back to the palace. She felt like she was carrying the weight of -- of love, she thought, romanticizing it. Or, if she was being more honest with herself, it was like the weight of her desires. The thought passed only through the undercurrents of her mind, though. It was too deep beneath the surface as of yet for L'Arachel to confront. For now.   
  
She was nearly trembling when she passed through the palace gates, when she mounted the steps and practically dashed down the hallway to her rooms. She would find her way to where Eirika and the rest of her party were staying in a moment, but -- but she needed to get a grip on herself. She slammed and locked the door behind her, made her way to her vanity and did her best to freshen up. She had to look her best for this, of course. Not that it was an event of any great significance, just...   
  
L'Arachel stared into the mirror. Her features were flushed in a way that she knew nothing could hide, an atypical nervousness making her chew at her lower lip. She made herself stop, rubbed at her face for a moment, trying to...she didn't know. To restore some feeling of normalcy, even if today was the furthest thing from normal.   
  
She was just giving a gift to her dear friend, Eirika, Princess of Renais. There was nothing for her to be concerned about. Eager, of course. Excited, fine. But she could practically feel her own sweat soaking its way through her clothing. Her undergarments, even.    
  
What would her parents say, if they could see her now? She had always endeavored to make them proud, and she felt that in her other trials -- her efforts against the Demon King's fell spawn, her attempts to broker a lasting peace in the wake of the war that had ravaged the land -- she had done well. So why did she feel like in this, she was falling short of the mark? It was a mere trinket, a simple gift --   
  
She stared for a few moments longer into the mirror, then looked down at the box. With hands that began to tremble again, she lifted the lid away and set it to the side, lifted up the drawstring bag and opened it wide, the better for lifting the sapphire pendant and letting it dangle and drop into the velvet bag's confines. She drew it shut a moment later, then slipped it into one of the pockets of her dress. It wasn't one that she had worn into combat, but it certainly was one of her more practical garments   
  
Moments later, L'Arachel was out the door.   
  
O O O   
  
Eirika, as it turned out, had only just returned from a patrol of the city's outskirts. To L'Arachel's relief, the condition of her armor suggested that they had found no Risen to fight, and a moment later, Eirika confirmed that suspicion for her.   
  
"It was all routine, I'm glad to say," Eirika confirmed, removing her gauntlets, then -- a moment later -- pulling her fine gloves from both her hands and running slightly sweaty fingers through her similarly sweat-mussed hair. L'Arachel did her best not to stare at the other woman. It took all the effort she had, and even then, she wasn't sure if said efforts had worked. "Not a Risen in sight, although the weather's growing warm enough that I almost felt like I was being basted in my armor." She laughed, a tinkling sound that never failed to make L'Arachel smile, even through the nervousness that was gripping her at the present moment. "And you?" she asked a moment later. "I was surprised when you said you wouldn't be coming today, though Moulder was glad for an opportunity to put his skills to work again. He almost sounded a bit sad that he didn't get the chance after all."   
  
L'Arachel found herself flushed, confronted with Eirika's eyes as they leveled directly on hers. "Ah, I had a bit of business in the city," L'Arachel said, not quite dissembling. Why didn't she just come out and say it? She had nothing to hide, she thought. Not very honestly, but she thought it. "Er, apropos of nothing..."   
  
"Yes?" Eirika said a moment later, looking at L'Arachel as she unbuckled her vambraces, pulling one and then another from her forearms. The metal and leather made muffled noises as they fell to the carpeted floor of Eirika's rooms. The thought suddenly popped into L'Arachel's head, unprovoked and certainly unasked-for, that Eirika was, technically, disrobing for her.    
  
L'Arachel turned away, partly to reach into the pocket of her dress and pull out the pendant's drawstring bag, and partly to mask how horribly flushed she had suddenly become. Gods, what was wrong with her? The thought wasn't just inconvenient or inaccurate, it was simply indecent, something that...that...   
  
That wouldn't get out of her head. She focused on the pendant, ignoring the sudden surge of heat at the mental image of Eirika taking off more of her armor...no, asking for L'Arachel's help with it, even. Gods. Her thoughts were growing as rose-tinted as the heavy sapphire she held in her very hands.    
  
...Hands that might slide into the cracks and crevices of Eirika's armor, unbuckling and peeling away leather and metal to reveal the gorgeous figure enclosed within --   
  
She spun around the instant she felt Eirika's hand settle on her shoulder. She found herself faced with a look of concern on the other woman's face, which abruptly turned to curiosity when L'Arachel's drawstring bag came into view.    
  
L'Arachel bit her lip for a moment -- gods, she hoped Eirika was too focused on the bag to notice that her skin from the scalp down had shifted to the same tint as a tomato's -- then held out the bag in both hands. "Er, I had...wondered if perhaps you might..." She felt like she was choking on her own tongue, which had swollen to the approximate girth of her forearm, from how impossible it felt to speak more than two words in sequence. "Please, open it," she made herself finish, halfway wanting to add, "and please, put me out of my misery afterward." What was wrong with her?   
  
She fidgeted. This was far from the first gift that L'Arachel had given Eirika. They had begun as simple tokens of her esteem for the other royal -- then friendship -- then, as she had found herself growing increasingly infatuated with the other woman, the trinkets had taken on a different tone. She had written letters to the other woman, flowery and traditional in the ways that they complimented Eirika and proclaimed L'Arachel's feelings for her. They were, L'Arachel would admit, in keeping with her own approach to nearly everything she did. She gave her courtly flirtations with Eirika the same degree of enthusiasm she displayed in combat and competition. And, she had slowly come to realize, that might have worked against her.    
  
After all, if Eirika had grown used to her, would the other woman really be at all inclined to take her affections seriously?    
  
That was what had left L'Arachel stymied for a time, until finally the idea for the pendant came to her. A truly sumptuous gift, something to reflect Eirika's own beauty, to make it as clear as possible just how serious L'Arachel was -- how serious she could be.    
  
She watched with unblinking eyes as Eirika finally pulled open the little pouch's drawstrings and drew forth the pendant by its chain. Eirika's expression slowly shifted from something uncertain to a mixture of shock and admiration. The other woman's eyes flicked for just an instant to L'Arachel, only to dart back to the pristinely cut pink sapphire at the pendant's center. "G-gods, L'Arachel," Eirika said, half-mumbling. Her breath hitched, which made something catch in L'Arachel's own throat. "It's...beautiful," she finally said. She held it in one hand, the other -- still holding the drawstring bag -- falling to her side.    
  
L'Arachel's response bubbled up in her mind in an instant, and, oh, it was too much, somehow the moment made the sort of thing she had said in letters a thousand times feel like so much more, so much more terrifying to put into words. But somehow the words forced their way out. "So are you, my dear," she said, and she didn't know how she managed to hold her gaze to Eirika's, didn't know how she managed not to spin around in terror as her face grew hotter and hotter by the second.   
  
Something similar could be seen in Eirika's own expression, which sent an even darker flush of satisfaction to L'Arachel's face. Eirika was a reserved woman, someone who took far greater care with what she said and how she said it than L'Arachel ever had. She was not prone to great displays of emotion. That wasn't to say that she was emotionless -- just that it took more to bring it to the surface, in the other woman. It made L'Arachel prize the moments when she did get to see Eirika's true feelings all the more. And Eirika's face was visibly flushed, her eyes shining, her mouth twitching with a kind of smile L'Arachel hadn't seen on her before. "O-oh," Eirika said, and to L'Arachel's increasing satisfaction, she actually sounded nervous.    
  
L'Arachel couldn't help it. She moved just a step closer. She wasn't trying to close the distance between them, exactly -- it was just that for an instant, she couldn't stop herself from wanting to be closer to the other woman. Then she made herself halt in her tracks. "Try it on," she said, her voice urging. "I want --" The pause was infinitesimal, barely noticeable. Just an instant of hesitation, before she plunged forward. "I want to see it on you," she finally said.   
  
"Oh," Eirika repeated, then lifted the chain with both hands and brought it over her head. She let it fall into place a moment later, and a moment later, she laughed. "It's," she said, her voice rueful as she looked down, "a little out of place --"   
  
L'Arachel, looking at Eirika's chest -- and trying not to think about how hard she was staring at Eirika's chest -- had to admit that the pendant looked a bit odd, hanging against Eirika's breastplate. She was still wearing armor, still suited for warfare.    
  
"I'm sure it would look wonderful with a dress," Eirika said, suddenly rushing to speak as she seemed to realize how awkward the moment had become. She was still flushed, her eyes not quite meeting L'Arachel's as she stammered out the words. "I --"   
  
And just like that, something clicked in L'Arachel's mind. It wasn't a conscious plan, just something that slipped out before she could stop herself. "Well, then, you should come to my rooms, Eirika," she said, suddenly bringing her own hands together in front of her chest. She couldn't help the smile that stretched her lips, couldn't stop herself from laughing. "I have many dressed, and one that I think might fit you very well," she said.   
  
It was a lie. A foul, awful lie, she thought, continuing to speak over the other woman's objections about how she couldn't possibly, how she shouldn't impose, and so on. She struck every one of Eirika's objections down, her excitement mounting to the point that it was very hard not to show. Soon enough, Eirika had agreed to come with her, now looking every bit as nervous as L'Arachel had felt moments ago. But all L'Arachel herself felt now was a hungry expectation, one that she tried hard not to think too much about the nature of.   
  
O O O   
  
Her lie, of course, had been about the dress. Because she didn't think that it would fit Eirika. She knew with utter certainty that it would, because she had had it tailored specifically for her weeks ago. It hadn't been done with the same expectations she had held in her heart while commissioning the pendant. She had just wanted to be prepared in case she found herself with an opportunity to drag Eirika a bit further into high society than the other princess seemed comfortable with yet.    
  
Now, though, all thoughts of courtly balls or romantic dances like out of a play were utterly absent from L'Arachel's mind. All she could think about was the silhouette that she could just faintly see behind the curtain in the far corner of the room. It took everything L'Arachel had not to stare as the other princess went about the business of pulling the dress on. It had been even harder for L'Arachel when the other woman had been discarding her armor. Disrobing. In L'Arachel's own rooms.   
  
Gods. Just thinking about her embarrassment then had her face flushed and her breathing erratic in the now. It was foolish of her, foolish and shameful. Her feelings for Eirika were, of course, utterly pure. She loved the other woman, of course, but that didn't mean she was some sort of -- some sort of, some ravenous boor, the way she had heard about that monster Valter being. She just...she just...   
  
She felt like her skin was burning, every inch of her, as she waited on the other side of her bedroom. She was trying her hardest to seem busy at her desk. There was a pen in her hand and everything. Her inkwell was undisturbed, though, and her diary hadn't even been opened. She felt more like snapping the pen over her knee out of sheer, wild impatience with the wait she was being forced to endure than writing so much as a word. "How is it fitting, my dear?" she made herself say, struggling to keep her voice even.   
  
"Surprisingly well," Eirika said, her voice a little shaky. Perhaps the other woman felt as nervous as L'Arachel did. She wasn't sure, she couldn't know. "You were right when you said the fit was a bit off. After all, you're far more --" And the other woman cut off.    
  
L'Arachel was, of course, far less well-muscled than Eirika was. The other woman's build was something she admired deeply about her. She admired it so much that sometimes she'd caught herself practically leering at the other woman when she drilled at the sword with her knights on the training field. And at other times, other people had caught her. But she couldn't think about that now, couldn't bare to even acknowledge that perhaps her attentions weren't quite as pure as she liked to believe. Or pretend.   
  
Gods. She rubbed at her face. She couldn't think about Eirika's shoulders. She absolutely couldn't. ...Or about the sweat she'd seen running down the other woman's back, when her shift had caught on her padded armor and come up nearly to her chest as she took it off at the end of practice --   
  
When she heard the curtain sweep open, it was like a sign that the gods truly had mercy, that they were watching out for her. There was nothing else for it, no other explanation but providence to explain the way that Eirika's timing saved L'Arachel from descending any further into her own indecency.    
  
Then she turned to face Eirika, and L'Arachel’s theory fell to pieces around her. It seemed the gods wanted L'Arachel to plummet even lower.    
  
When L'Arachel commissioned the dress, she had thought little of the design. She had obtained Eirika's measurements from one of her servants, and then she had sent them to one of the more widely appreciated dress-makers in the city, asking merely that they make something fashionable for Eirika, something that would highlight her beauty the way that L'Arachel knew that the other woman deserved. And when she had received the dress, she had given it only a glance before hanging it in her closet for whenever opportunity came knocking at her door.    
  
She hadn't thought about the kinds of opportunities that the dress might afford, though, and at no point had she truly imagined what Eirika might look like wearing it. L'Arachel wasn't so impure as to mentally leer at her own friend, to dress -- or undress, gods forbid -- Eirika in the privacy of her own mind. She -- she was --   
  
She looked at Eirika, having finally stepped out of the little corner where L'Arachel often dressed at any time when her servants were present in her rooms, and she realized that much that she had believed about herself was an utter lie.   
  
Eirika was...she was...   
  
"How do I look?" Eirika asked, her face slightly flushed as she looked more at the floor than at L'Arachel. Which was a very fine thing indeed, because if she'd looked up, she might have noticed the expressions flickering across her friend's face, and wondered.   
  
L'Arachel looked at Eirika, and for the first time in her life, there was absolutely no denying what she was truly feeling. It was, without a doubt, lust. The dress wasn't exactly tight on Eirika's figure, but there was something about the way it hung and clung to Eirika's hips that hid nothing about the other woman's curves. The dress embraced Eirika in all the ways that L'Arachel had, deep in her heart, dreamed of embracing the other woman. The curve of her breasts was perfectly visible, not just in the way the dress covered them, but in the rich, eye-snagging slash of cleavage the dress wasn't even remotely shy about exposing. The pink sapphire pendant hung between Eirika's breasts, ornamenting them perfectly. And the dress bared Eirika's shoulders. The dress...the dress...   
  
L'Arachel fought the urge to hide her face in her hands. Or to throw herself out the window just beside her desk. To run and hide from the other woman. She...she couldn't...she mustn't look at her friend this way, she couldn't possibly be looking at her friend this way.   
  
Except, of course, she was.    
  
The dress was exactly the sort of thing she had seen at ball after ball in Rausten, even years before. It was up to the current styles, but Rausten's fashion hadn't been precisely modest for quite some time now, for all that it was Magvel's holy capital. She had seen countless noble-blooded women wear dresses just like this one, and L'Arachel hadn't broken out into a sweat then.    
  
But it hadn't been Eirika wearing them, then. L'Arachel couldn't stop staring. The dress didn't expose much more skin than what she could already see -- there was a slit down the side of the dress, but with the way the dress hung, one couldn't really see Eirika's legs unless she was to do a twirl on the dance floor. The dress...the dress wasn't all that immodest. It was in no way obscene.   
  
It was L'Arachel that was obscene.    
  
She saw Eirika in the dress, and for the first time, was utterly honest with herself about how she really felt about Eirika, princess of Renais. The princess felt herself harden beneath her own dress, felt her cock stiffening to full attention in a way that meant that above all else, she needed not to stand up right now. Gods.    
  
She saw Eirika, and wanted to rip the dress off her body, right then and there. The desire hit her all at once, taking her breath away, almost frightening L'Arachel with its intensity. She wanted to peel the dress off of Eirika's form. She wanted to throw the other woman forward onto her hands and knees, push the dress up past her hips and ass, and --   
  
"You look --" Her throat caught as she realized how much time had passed since Eirika had asked her question. L'Arachel had simply been staring at the other woman, goggling at her like some, some lewd -- some --   
  
She couldn't think of any words impure enough to fit just how she was feeling. Just how sickeningly perverted she felt as she looked at Eirika, her friend.    
  
And Eirika's face was growing increasingly tense as the moment stretched on, her uncertainty hardening into something else -- gods, did she think L'Arachel didn't admire her? It was laughable, that thought, and yet L'Arachel knew that Eirika had very little to act upon in the way of actual evidence of L'Arachel's feelings. Who knew what Eirika must think about how she felt, after the sudden, choked silence she had displayed. "You look -- stunning," she made herself say, her voice suddenly hoarse.    
  
Something in Eirika's face changed at the words -- or at the way L'Arachel said them. "I," the other woman said, her voice growing redder, "I need to be -- I need to take my leave," Eirika said, and then suddenly she was making for the exit, and L'Arachel couldn't say anything, couldn't think of so much as a word to say as the other woman left her rooms.    
  
Left, leaving L'Arachel alone, leaving her to her own devices. Leaving L'Arachel soaked all the way through her clothing with sweat, her undergarments clinging to her skin from the sheer want she had exuded. Leaving her with a stiff cock, and arousal so thick that suddenly, L'Arachel could almost smell it through her clothing. Gods.    
  
O O O   
  
In the wake of what had happened, it was hard to find opportunities to be alone in a room with Eirika. They met at council in the days after, she saw the other woman drilling away as always at her sword practice on the field, but at any time that L'Arachel tried to find a moment alone with the other princess, she found herself stymied by the way that Eirika was often the first to leave a room at the end of a group conversation. By the way the other woman wouldn't quite look her in the eye.   
  
The worst part was that L'Arachel was utterly certain that what she was seeing wasn't disgust, wasn't the woman growing utterly distant from her out of sheer outrage at L'Arachel's conduct. Somehow, through some, some additional sense she could only just now feel, L'Arachel knew that Eirika felt something toward her, whether romantic or more...base.   
  
And L'Arachel couldn't hold base against the other woman, now. She couldn't hold such impure thoughts against anyone. Not when L'Arachel herself had become some, some...harlot. Some pervert.    
  
There was nothing else she could feel about herself, in the wake of the way her mind had revved into overdrive at the sight of Eirika in that dress. L'Arachel had seen her in it, and somehow the mere sight of Eirika in a simple ball gown had thrown L'Arachel into an endless whirlpool of sick, sweet, hot lust that wouldn't leave her mind alone. Not during the day, and not during her nights, when L'Arachel was left all alone without anyone to stop her from indulging in her own lusts.    
  
The sight of Eirika, and the way it had left L'Arachel soaked through with the sweat of her own desires...it had awakened something in her. That night, L'Arachel had slipped into one of her flimsiest silk nightgowns, something practically diaphanous, and had relished the way the garment had swiftly started to cling to her skin, between the sweat L'Arachel had already shed and the way she only grew filthier as she finally, helplessly acted on her base desires. She had beaten helplessly at her own cock, that first night, her hands not enough to slake her lusts as she had cum again and again, at first merely beading the fabric of her slim silk nightgown, but then fouling it more thoroughly, until it had clung to her even more lewdly as her actions had continued.    
  
She had stayed up late that night, almost unable to sleep, until finally her exertions had finally left her to sink deep into her dreams. Dreams that were now haunted by Eirika, by the sight of her in that dress. She couldn't remember exactly what she had dreamed, but she knew from the way that she woke up rock hard what the nature of that dream had been.   
  
And then she had carried on with her daily life, faced with the prospect of an Eirika that was utterly unwilling to even look at her. L'Arachel couldn't bear it, the way the other princess hardly ever even tarried in a room that L'Arachel happened to be in.    
  
Even worse was the way that the other princess in Eirika's life was looking at L'Arachel now. Tana of Frelia had seemed a kind, wonderful soul when L'Arachel had first met her. Indeed, she had felt a similar spark of attraction to Tana as she had to Eirika, when they had first met. But all of that friendly exterior had seemed to cool entirely when L'Arachel had begun her ebullient attempts at wooing Princess Eirika. And that cooling was nothing compared to the way that Tana was looking at L'Arachel these days.    
  
L'Arachel couldn't imagine what Eirika had said to the other woman. Had she opened up entirely about L'Arachel's shameful conduct in her rooms? Had she, perhaps -- and the thought made it hard for L'Arachel to think straight -- confessed to some changing of feelings toward L'Arachel? She didn't know, and from how quiet Eirika had become around her, she hadn't had the opportunity to hear the two speak in public. It was a mystery, and one she couldn't solve. But Tana of Frelia looked at L'Arachel now as an enemy. There was no other way for L'Arachel to interpret it. What she saw in Tana's gaze was very nearly hate.    
  
She couldn't think about it. She could barely think about anything, not with how upside-down her life had become in the wake of her lustful awakening. She woke up horny. Not simply hard -- that was simply the way it was, to have a cock. No, she woke up horny, possessed by lust, her thoughts focused on just one thing as soon as she woke. Eirika, in that dress.   
  
And Eirika, out of it.    
  
The next night, L'Arachel didn't even wait until true nightfall before she began to take action. She shucked everything, took off her dress and her underthings -- her panties had been soaked for hours as she came closer and closer to a time when she knew that she could relieve herself -- and then put on another of her slightest, thinnest, most flimsy and tearable night dresses. And then she had taken no time at all before beginning to stroke herself, to jerk desperately at her own cock. This time, she had brought home lotions, oils -- nothing precisely intended for the purposes she fully intended to use them for, but all safe. Soon enough her cock was slick, her hand gliding up and down her own length with abandon as she worked at herself with desperate intent.   
  
The image couldn't leave her mind. Eirika, the dress clinging to her form like...like wrapping on a present. Beautiful, perhaps, but meant to be torn away eventually. And L'Arachel couldn't stop imagining the tearing, couldn't stop picturing it in her head. Getting Eirika on her hands and knees. Straddling the other princess, her own knees buried in the comforter to either side of Eirika's. They would be in bed, of course. L'Arachel's cock bare and aching, rutting against the crack of Eirika's ass.    
  
Gods. Something in L'Arachel still rebelled at anything so, so utterly impure. It...it had to be romantic, her first time with Eirika. The other woman was, she loved her. She wasn't some mere target for L'Arachel's lusts. She, she would draw the other woman in for a kiss --   
  
And then she was picturing herself pinning Eirika to the wall, whispering decidedly unsweet somethings into the other woman's ear, her lips then descending on Eirika's bared throat. Her grinding her cock against the junction of Eirika's thighs, rutting against her through their clothing. Eirika moaning at the contact.   
  
She wanted to hear Eirika moan. She wanted it terribly, wanted it the way that a man dying of thirst wanted one last swallow before the end. She wanted it enough to bring tears to her eyes as she climaxed, thrusting against a pillow, rutting against it atop her bed until she finally came all over it.    
  
It wasn't enough. None of it could possibly be enough.   
  
The next day, she gave Rennac instructions, then had him give similar ones to a third party, one who'd never guess who the man worked for. Through a series of middlemen, L'Arachel commissioned something new from the silversmith who had made the pendant for her, the one that had changed everything. And then she had commissioned other things from other craftsmen, trinkets of great value but of a nature that meant she couldn't possibly have anyone knowing that she was the one who had commissioned them, had them made, or picked them up. And then she had gone about her business, enduring another day spent without Eirika by her side, Eirika laughing that tinkling laugh that L'Arachel so loved. Another day of Tana's glares. Another day without true satisfaction, real satisfaction, the kind that she really needed.    
  
She was growing more honest with herself as the hours went by. She looked at Eirika, on one of the few times she saw the other woman, and knew without flinching what she wanted to do to the other woman. Imagined -- even though the imagining would make her hard again, make her cock ooze enough precum to leave her panties soaked through -- putting Eirika in that dress again, then tearing it off her.    
  
The things that L'Arachel wanted to do to Eirika...it had been hard to admit to herself, and she could only feel relief, now that the truth was out in more than just the refuge of her heart.    
  
She had paid dearly for haste on the part of the men whose works she had commissioned, and when L'Arachel returned to her own quarters, a series of boxes were waiting for her. She would have to pay Rennac extra for this. Both for his silence, and for his loyalty. For all she knew, the people who had carried out her little shopping list were under the impression that he would be using it all himself.    
  
She opened the first, and it was a collar, this one similarly adorned with a pink sapphire. She had purchased every one in the city, fully intending to use them all in pieces of jewelry...and other things. Items of a certain nature. These items were only the first she would use.   
  
She buckled the collar around her own neck, suddenly feeling warm. She imagined Eirika wearing it.    
  
It was a sick, twisted thing that had dropped into L'Arachel's mind the previous night, something that she hadn't been able to control, to stop herself from indulging in thoughts of. The mental picture of a mostly-stripped Renaitian princess had put L'Arachel in mind of the idea of Eirika as...as...   
  
She ran a finger along the side of the collar she had put on herself, imagining it on the other woman's slender neck. Yes. If she was being honest with herself...   
  
She'd imagined Eirika as a pet. As a woman kept.    
  
Just thinking about it made her blood heat, made her cock throb with expectation as she began to stroke it. She had brought home yet another jar of a particularly exotic oil, one that made her skin feel even hotter than usual, and wonderfully, sinfully slick. She stroked herself, unable to resist sinking deeper into what she was imagining.    
  
Eirika, her body lewdly exposed for L'Arachel. The dress torn away -- ripped right off her body by L'Arachel's impatient hands. The collar around Eirika's neck, not L'Arachel's, snug around her perfect skin. And...and...   
  
Her mind spiralled into sinful imagining, dark thoughts, ones that a kind woman wouldn't have. A woman truly enamored with justice, with heroism as she had always been, would never think like this.    
  
She remembered the look on Tana's face, the anger, the near-hatred at the sight of L'Arachel. She had seen less hostile looks on Tana's face before, brief flashes of anger when L'Arachel had made her more romantic, excited overtures of loving intent to the princess of Renais. ...Yes. Yes, L'Arachel had known. She had picked up all too easily that Tana of Frelia had her own feelings for Eirika, whether she was being honest about them or not.    
  
Perhaps L'Arachel was projecting...but she didn't think so. No, she thought that Tana was just as caught on Eirika's perfect heart as L'Arachel had become since the start against the Risen brought up by the Demon King. And perhaps the other woman had it worse. She knew that the Frelian royal siblings had been friends with the royal twins of Renais for a long time. She imagined that Tana had had a long time to grow enamored with Eirika, and worse, Tana had shown no signs of outward romantic intent toward her. Perhaps she didn't know how she truly felt. Or perhaps she had been denying those feelings, for whatever reason? Perhaps to preserve their friendship?   
  
In truth, L'Arachel didn't care about the exact nature of Tana's feelings for Eirika. She only thought that they were at least romantic in nature, and that was enough for the sick, cruel thoughts circling in L'Arachel's mind as she continued to beat at her oil-slicked cock, bent over on her knees and one hand on her four-poster bed.    
  
She knew that Tana loved Eirika...and L'Arachel wanted to take Eirika from her. It was a sick thought, an awful thought, but one that brought her passions to rising heights. L'Arachel's hand began to move faster, harder. Her face grew more and more flushed with the effort, and soon enough she came, marking her own bed with her plentiful seed.    
  
...She needed more.   
  
O O O   
  
The next day, L'Arachel ventured out wearing another of the little trinkets that she had had made, but this one, no one else could see. And by the nature of its location, L'Arachel certainly couldn't see it either. She could only feel it. Oh, yes, she could feel it.   
  
The silver plug was the one thing that, above all else, she had not wanted to be connected with her name or her finances in any way. It was the true reason that she had enlisted Rennac's help in having the toys created. It was only modest in size, and she had inserted it into her own ass without much in the way of difficulty. It was only three or four inches long, and it was...easy enough for L'Arachel to walk or sit with the toy embedded in her lush, ample tush. A bit awkward at moments, but not terrible.   
  
Far harder for her to hide was the complex enchantment that she had laid on it herself, late into the night, after she had once again utterly soiled her nightclothes and her bed with her own plentiful seed. The toy was bonded to her own magic, with a spell that was able to make it vibrate with one nonverbal, purely mental command. She could make it grow warmer with another, or colder the next. She could even make it swell, ever so slightly. And as she sat in council with Eirika, Tana, and the others in command of the Risen-hunting army that had stayed in place in the wake of the war, L'Arachel practiced on herself.   
  
It had her in a hot, desperate sweat, one that had soaked clean through her undergarments all over again. Her clothing was only close behind, and she had already fielded quite a few questions from the other members of the council. Even Eirika, for a few moments, had looked at L'Arachel with concern in her eyes.    
  
But for once, it wasn't Eirika's gaze giving L'Arachel trouble. As she did her utmost to remain in control of herself as the meeting wound down, the woman representing the Jehannan mercenaries who had fought so effectively alongside the main army during the war kept meeting L'Arachel's eyes. Marisa of Jehanna was a quiet one, mostly. L'Arachel had spoken to her a few times, had tried her best to connect with the other woman once they had begun fighting alongside one another with regularity. The woman had struck her as canny, if with a bit of a tendency to hold her cards too close to the chest.   
  
The woman looked at L'Arachel again, her eyes briefly raking up and down L'Arachel's figure. And then...   
  
Gods.    
  
The other woman actually smiled at her. L'Arachel found herself sinking slightly in her chair -- stifling a moan at the way that this further stimulated her ass, pushing the plug deeper into her -- at the way that Marisa of Jehanna almost seemed to...almost seemed to smirk at her. It was a knowing look, a cast to the other woman's eyes that made it seem like she could see right through L'Arachel's clothing to the way that her body was coated in sweat, her bra and panties sticking to her like a second skin. Like she could see the plug vibrating inside L'Arachel. LIke she could see right into L'Arachel's soul.   
  
L'Arachel tried not to meet the other woman's gaze, but there was something about Marisa in that moment that made it impossible for L'Arachel to truly hide herself. Instead, she met the other woman's eyes, and struggled to hold her composure.    
  
The look on Marisa's face only sharpened, and it almost looked like she was about to open her mouth when the meeting was finally called to a close.   
  
O O O   
  
When L'Arachel made it back to her rooms, she threw herself to the bed immediately, shedding all of her clothing as quickly as she could manage on the way. Her panties actually smacked against the floor with a wet sound when she threw them down.   
  
A moment later, she was pulling on the very same nightgown that she had worn the night before, utterly heedless of how she had already sweated through it once before. She didn't just not care about it, that almost made the thought more attractive to her. Gods, there was something wrong with her. Everything was wrong with her. She had no idea what was going on in her own mind anymore.    
  
She scrambled across the bed, reaching out to her nightstand and grabbing a few of the other boxes that she had neglected thus far.   
  
A pair of anklets, pretty and encrusted with tiny pink sapphires. She snapped them shut around her own ankles, luxuriating in the way they hung on her skin. She wanted to feel all of it, feel what she was dreaming of doing to Eirika. The only thing that could make it more real for her was if Eirika was to actually enter the room.   
  
She slipped on several bracelets a moment later, imagining herself as some...some lewd dancer, far lewder than the Jehannan woman who worked with the same company as Marisa. She imagined herself dancing -- no, no, it was better if she imagined Eirika at it. She imagined Eirika, stripped bare save for the jewelry that L'Arachel would gift her soon enough. Eirika dancing for L'Arachel, dancing at the foot of her bed, her full breasts jiggling deliciously as her body moved and gyrated. Her bracelets ringing together as her arms rose and fell.    
  
It was too good. L'Arachel applied her oils, her hands going to work almost immediately. Gods. Gods. She was a sinner, she was foul, she, she was a disgusting, perverted excuse for a princess...she beat at her cock even more fervently at the thought. Her eyes threatened to roll back in her head. She was awful. Her parents would be -- her parents --   
  
The thought of Eirika was too much. L'Arachel climaxed after barely a minute of stroking herself, leaving her own belly and breasts covered in her own cum, as well as much of the inside of her nightie. She let it ride up over her hips a moment later as she continued to stroke herself. She ratcheted up the intensity on the little plug in her ass once again, brought it up far higher than she had been willing to risk while she sat in that meeting. Sat there, with Eirika and Tana and all their retainers and generals.    
  
Sat there, with Marisa looking at her with knowing eyes.   
  
Gods, just thinking about it brought L'Arachel closer to the edge again. BUt no, no. Her lusts weren't for Marisa, weren't for the way that woman had looked at her. They were all for Eirika, all for the Renaitian princess who had so effectively stolen L'Arachel's heart, then commanded her darker feelings merely by wearing a dress. And not even a particularly immodest one. One that any Rausten woman might have worn to a ball.    
  
She imagined her in the dress all over again. Perhaps stripping her out of it wasn't the best first move. She imagined fondling Eirika's breasts through the front of the dress, the fabric crushing and crinkling beneath L'Arachel's fingers as she massaged and rolls her woman's tits. she imagined pulling the front of Eirika's top down, letting those breasts spill free. Imagined making Eirika cry out with the pleasure that L'Arachel could only dream of making her feel.    
  
She...she imagined Eirika pushed down to her knees, the other woman looking up at her with slightly frightened eyes, but her gaze still just as clouded with lust as L'Arachel herself was feeling in the moment.    
  
She relished the thought, the imaginary feeling of Eirika, princess of Renais, hero of the world, using her luscious tits to massage L'Arachel's cock. Yes. Yes, that was good. She beat even harder at her own cock at the thought, her furious massaging of her own womanhood.   
  
She dipped her hand back into the oil-filled jar a moment later, then started to stroke herself even more fervently than before. She wanted this. She wanted it to be real. She wanted Eirika on her knees, looking up at her, her tongue...her tongue hanging out.   
  
L'Arachel came again, and this time, L'Arachel envisioned Eirika taking it. Taking it across her face. Taking it like a slut, like some eager, cum-addicted whore. Just thinking the words had L'Arachel on the verge of climax yet again.    
  
A part of L'Arachel was still mortified to be thinking such things about her darling Eirika, a woman that she truly respected, a comrade from the past war that she loved with all her heart. Eirika was worthy of her respect, was far more than some...some filthy, cum-swilling camp follower...   
  
L'Arachel's cock throbbed almost painfully at the thought.    
  
She truly did love Eirika, but there was some sick part of L'Arachel that loved the thought of pushing her down, both with her own hands and with her words. Some disgusting part of L'Arachel wanted to degrade her, to paint her with sinful thoughts in her own mind. She loved the idea of Eirika as her kept woman, her whore, paid in trinkets and cum that, in L'Arachel's mind, she begged for. Begged with all her heart and soul, falling on her knees before L'Arachel in supplication. L'Arachel imagined it, imagined looking down at the other woman as she stroked her cock -- no, as Eirika stroked it. As the princess of Renais carefully worshipped L'Arachel's womanhood with both hands.    
  
No.    
  
No, stroked L'Arachel's cock with one hand, while pleasuring herself with the other. She imagined sweat pouring down Eirika's face just as it was leaving L'Arachel's own skin shiny and wet now. She imagined Eirika's lips parted with expectation as she drove L'Arachel closer and closer to the brink of climax, as her hands worked desperately to push her closer to the edge. She could actually hear Eriika's voice. "Please, L'Arachel," Eriika might moan.    
  
No.   
  
"Please, mistress," she could almost hear Eirika saying. "Please, mistress, I want to taste your cum. Please don't hold it back, it isn't fair, I've been waiting all day."   
  
It was even worse for L'Arachel when she imagined a slight whine to Eirika's voice at the awful, sinful words, lilting the last part of her last word. Waiting all day. Waiting all day, just like L'Arachel had been desperately waiting, teetering on the edge of a public, horribly indecent climax with a magical plug vibrating in her ass, pushing her even further toward the brink of simply breaking. She imagined Marisa's expression, and tried to make it herself. What if she could make Eirika feel as she had felt? What if she could make Eirika feel so understood, so utterly naked in the face of someone else's observation?   
  
She imagined keeping Eirika on the edge at all times, imagined Eriika being utterly reliant on her for pleasure. It was sick of her, wrong of her, but she wanted Eirika to be utterly, completely hers. She didn't want to share.    
  
She particularly didn't want to share with Tana of Frelia. L'Arachel's heart beat faster at the thought of that woman, at the thought of...of taking Eirika away from her. Now that she was almost solidly convinced that Tana was utterly infatuated with the princess of Renais, L'Arachel found it deliciously evil to think of simply plying Eirika with gifts and with lustful affection, pulling her away from a Tana who had probably grown accustomed to being able to claim Eirika as hers, even if only as a friend. She wanted to make Tana watch while she kissed Eirika in public. She wanted to fondle Eirika in an almost-private area of the palace, wanted to somehow engineer a situation where Tana would see it.    
  
She was a sinner, she was sick, she was downright evil. But that didn't stop L'Arachel from feeling these feelings, from sinking into them with a sinful delight. She wanted to break the two women up, for all that they weren't actually in a relationship. The particulars didn't matter to L'Arachel, only that she might feel as though her imaginings were real.    
  
She stroked faster, then dipped her hand into the jar of oil once again. Her cock was soon slick and warm with the fluid's bounty, and in no time at all she was on the verge all over again. Gods. This was nothing compared to hat she really wanted. These imaginings couldn't stack against how L'Arachel somehow knew the real thing could feel. How it had to feel.   
  
How it would feel.   
  
She could feel some powerful realization creeping closer and closer, knew that she was approaching some deep change, some decision that needed to be made, couldn't be delayed.    
  
She didn't want to admit it to herself yet, though. She didn't want to be that honest. It was easier to think of all this as strictly a fantasy, a sick imagining that wouldn't actually affect anything. She wasn't the kind of woman who would do the things she was imagining doing. She...she couldn't be. Could she?    
  
It didn't matter, L'Arachel realized, as she came closer to getting off again -- then did. She found her hands and arms and nightgown utterly soiled with her cum, her thighs as well. There was nothing stopping her from carrying on, and on, and on. Her thoughts had been spiralling down into sickness for some time, sure. She even knew that the thoughts she was thinking were wrong. But knowing that she should stop, and actually stoppint, were two entirely different things.    
  
She was nearing some point of no return as she resumed stroking herself. Her cock ached with a terrible pleasure; she was beyond overstimulated now. She shouldn't have been stroking herself in the immediate wake of getting off, but here she was.    
  
She thrust desperately against her hand, her bracelets -- Eirika's bracelets, she admitted to herself -- jangling against one another around her wrists as she came closer and closer to another climax. She rolled onto her back, feeling the lewd wetness of the way her nightie continued to cling to her. She wanted more, needed more. Gods.    
  
She knew the truth she was refusing to admit to herself. she knew exactly what she had come down to, in sinking to this elevel.    
  
What she wanted was for all this to be real...and she knew, somehow, that no matter what she told herself, she was going to make this real. It didn't matter what it took. She just wanted it to happen, and nothing, not propriety, not decency, nothing at all was going to stop L'Arachel from acting on her sick, twisted lusts.    
  
She wanted to shove Eirika down onto her knees, rut against her face with her cock, nad cum all over her pretty, perfect features. She wanted to use her friend like a cumrag.    
  
L'Arachel wanted to fuck Eirika of Renais like an animal, like something even lower than that. She wanted to put Eirika on a leash and use it as leverage as she railed her in her perfect, tight, well-muscled ass. She wanted to use Eirika endlessly, every night, never stopping.   
  
She could accept it, now. She could admit that to herself, having utterly soaked herself in her own juices. Having stewed in them in public, having practically drowned herself and every last one of her nightgowns in them at night. She was a sick, awful excuse for a friend, but that was fine, L'Arachel thought with a slightly crazed smile as she continued to beat her own cock like it was her last night on earth. It was fine if she was a bad friend, because a friend wasn't what she meant to remain as with Eirika.    
  
All this time, she had just been playing games. She had been too scared to do more than make shallow, silly overtures toward the other woman. Little trinkets. Even her most impressive gift, the sumptuous, heavy pendant that she had had crafted for Eirika, had been little more than an attempt at hiding what she really wanted from the other woman.   
  
The collar had been far more honest.   
  
It wasn't that she didn't feel true romantic love toward Eirika. But the deep, feverish inner core of L'Arachel's desires was far less decent than she had been willing to admit until that day when she had seen Eirika in that dress, and been almost completely incapable of speech.   
  
L'Arachel knew who she was now, and she knew what she wanted from Eirika. Above all else, she wanted to fuck her. She wanted to fuck her like a whore. She wanted to fuck her like an animal. She wanted to fuck her like she was L'Arachel's wife, like L'Arachel had an absolute claim to Eirika, every night, regardless of anything else.    
  
And knowing that, there was nothing to stop L'Arachel from doing whatever was necessary to reach that goal. She had been acting in silly, watered-down ways when all she had wanted from Eirika was courtly, pure romance. But that wasn't really L'Arachel, not entirely. She wanted the romance, yes, but she also wanted to drag Eirika down and use her in all the ways that she had fantasized about over the last several days.    
  
She came one last time that night, rutting desperately against the bed as she continued to jerk her cock with one hand. She ended up with something akin to a puddle in the middle of the bed. She looked down at it, and imagined Eirika beneath her. Imagined gripping the other girl by the back of her head and rubbing her face in it. The thought made her hard again.   
  
O O O   
  
The next day, L'Arachel sent Eirika a letter.   
  
O O O   
  
Eirika of Renais sat at her desk, looking at the sealed envelope that Rennac had handed her. She'd tried to avoid him, when she'd realized that he was making a beeline for her across the courtyard outside the palace at Rausten, but there had been no shaking the man off. Ironic, given how often she had seen him try to run away from L'Arachel himself.    
  
Now, in her guest bedroom at the palace, she used a letter-opener, then pulled out a folded sheet of good paper, the kind of stationary you had to go out of your way to buy in a city, not just anywhere. Something about the scent that clung to it felt strange to Eirika, made her feel a swooping sensation in her gut. She'd never smelled anything like it before.    
  
That feeling didn't go away as she started to read the letter.   
  
_My dearest Eirika_ , the letter started.   
  
_I am sorry -- deeply, truly sorry -- for my unbecoming conduct on the day we last spoke. I was the one to invite you to my quarters, and I was the one to invite you into that dress. I should have been better prepared for the prospect of you actually wearing it. My only defense is that I do not believe there is anything I could have done to prepare myself for just how utterly ravishing you would look in it, my dear._   
  
Eirika briefly stopped being able to breathe as she reread that last line. Something seized in her throat. That -- she couldn't have just --   
  
Her eyes roved on. She couldn't stop herself.    
  
_It was that, Eirika, that left me briefly dumb, completely incapable of responding to you in the way you so richly deserved. You truly did look stunning, and my only regret is that I found myself unable to tell you. I pray, I desperately hope, Eirika, that my reticence did not give you the wrong idea about how you looked, or how I felt. Or how I continue to feel._   
  
_Eirika, over the months -- as the war with the Demon King and his allies drew to a close, and as our new efforts to secure a lasting peace have unfolded -- I have made efforts to show you how I feel, but such efforts were, I think, always doomed when I did not quite understand my feelings for you myself. But seeing you that day, decked out in a dress that so successfully showcased your beauty, was a revelation. Eirika, I beg of you, let us speak again. Let me be with you again, close to you again, so that I might make it more abundantly clear exactly how I feel about you, and in exactly which ways I want to be even closer to you, my dear, lovely Eirika._   
  
The princess in question found her eyes widening as she reached the end of the letter. She reread the last sentence, her lips parting as her face grew hotter than she could remember it being before -- other than that afternoon in L’Arachel’s chambers.    
  
She hadn’t quite meant to stay away from L’Arachel for such a long time. It had simply been hard for her to deal with her feelings in the wake of the painfully awkward moment they had shared in the other woman’s quarters. She hadn’t known how to react to the sight of L’Arachel looking at her in that way, And in one sense, this letter didn’t help things.   
  
And yet, Eirika found her heart racing as she read through the letter a second time, and then a third. There weren’t really any other ways that the other princess’s words could be interpreted, were there? Did L’Arachel…   
  
She closed the letter, then slipped it into her own desk before closing the drawer once more.    
  
Eirika felt terribly aware of her own body, felt hotter than she could remember having felt in the past. She was no great prude, and had indulged in her share of crushes and infatuations over the years, but this was something different. There was a woman out there who wanted her.  _Wanted_ her. There was really no other way to put it.    
  
And Eirika couldn’t help but feel excited at that. She had discounted L’Arachel’s feelings for too long, in part because of just how regularly, and loudly, the other woman had proclaimed them. But the other woman had reduced the volume of her declarations, and instead brought the temperature up. And now, late at night, Eirika found herself suddenly desperate in her wishes for morning to come. It was past time that she spoke to L’Arachel again. 


	2. Contact

The day after she received L’Arachel’s letter -- and Eirika had to force herself not to think of the letter’s contents, lest she find herself beet red and rendered mute by sheer embarrassment -- she went to the day’s council meeting with no small amount of trepidation.    
  
She hadn’t actually spoken to L’Arachel in days. Not since that evening in L’Arachel’s rooms at the palace, not since she had worn that dress and found herself faced with a reaction from her friend that she hadn’t been prepared for. Even now, with time and distance separating her from that night's events, Eirika still couldn't quite let herself envision the way that L'Arachel had looked without going just as scarlet as when she thought about the letter.    
  
There had been a nakedness to L'Arachel's gaze, an open hunger that Eirika had taken a moment to understand was directed at her, and her alone. It had been hard for her to reconcile with the way she had always thought of L'Arachel, the other woman having been so prone to extravagant gestures of courtly romance. There had been a purity in L'Arachel's former regard for her, a simplicity in the way she acted. She had never acted untoward, in Eirika's memory.    
  
Oh, there might have been a stray comment here or there, an occasional compliment to Eirika's supposed beauty that went just a little too close to the edge of flirting to be entirely appropriate in a friendly context. But all of that, all those little moments added together, had been nothing beside the naked, bared heat in L'ARachel's gaze that night.    
  
Part of what had led Eirika to flee had been a fear that she might burn herself on that flame. That she might scald herself by coming too close, by letting herself be touched by -- or by letting herself reach out to touch -- L'Arachel.    
  
And now she was going to see her again, and Eirika found herself torn between terror and elation.    
  
When the meeting began in earnest -- Eirika was just a hair late arriving, after having to resolve a silly dispute between Forde and Kyle over what the knights would be wearing to the upcoming banquet hosted at Rausten's holy palace -- Eirika was hard pressed to do so much as look up from her place at the table after sitting. She had noticed L'Arachel immediately, had seen a flash of the other woman's green locks, and had immediately found her eyes glued to her feet as she made her way to the table. Now all she could do was listen, trying not to chew her lip as she had as a child, nervous and fidgeting.    
  
What was wrong with her?   
  
"My lady Eirika, what say you?" said the voice that had dominated her dreams last night, and Eirika looked up, trying not to openly flinch.   
  
It was, of course, L'Arachel.    
  
"Pardon?" Eirika got out. Her voice sounded like her throat had been caught in a vice. It seemed to tighten further as she saw L'Arachel's face, the way the other woman's eyes steadily regarded her. The slight curve to L'Arachel's lips, not from amusement at Eirika's embarrassed state, but merely from looking at Eirika at all.    
  
It was strange for her to think of a time in her life when the sight of L'Arachel hadn't set her heart to hammering against the inside of her chest. How had she managed it? What had changed in L'Arachel?    
  
Or in her?    
  
"Perhaps your mind was set to drifting, dear," L'Arachel said. A few seats away -- at the long table where the various nobles and highly-placed soldiers that made up the council met each day -- something shifted almost imperceptibly in Tana of Frelia’s expression. Eirika could barely spare the attention to notice it, save to see that her friend's smile had grown just a shade more carefully neutral. But Eirika's eyes were locked onto L'Arachel, and Tana was the furthest thing from her mind at that moment. "I, I am sorry, you're right...what were we discussing?" Eirika asked, wishing she could look anywhere else.    
  
"The banquet we'll be holding at the palace tonight," L'Arachel said, that smile still on her face, making it hard for Eirika to think at all, hard for her to process L'Arachel's words even when she was speaking directly to Eirika, face to face. "I was just asking if you had any recommendations for the catering, as I don't know how well Rausten's fare is likely to fit your taste, or that of your men."    
  
Something about the way L'Arachel's tongue seemed to linger on the word 'taste' made Eirika flush somehow darker. There surely was something wrong with her. Her mind had fallen far, plummeted right into the gutter, and she desperately needed to look anywhere but at L'Arachel's lips or neck or  _what was wrong with her_ ? "I, I think you may be right, it could be a good idea to...seek out a more diverse group of caterers, to attend to everyone's palates..." Eirika trailed off lamely. "If it is needful, I would be happy to apply my own funds --"   
  
"Oh, I absolutely will not hear of that," L'Arachel said, clapping her hands together lightly. There was a little more of her typical bombast in her tone now, and her eyes seemed to sparkle more with her typical glee at opportunities to flaunt her generosity, and somewhat less with her more recent, almost predatory regard for Eirika. It helped lessen the spell, made it easier for Eirika to look around at the others. "Rausten's coffers are more than capable of seeing to this alliance's needs, do not doubt it," L'Arachel continued, while Eirika's eyes wandered.    
  
Did the others seem amused at Eirika's apparent descent into madness? It hardly seemed as though they knew of anything that had gone wrong, which was reassuring. The only two people who seemed to be paying Eirika any particular mind were Tana, who seemed slightly distracted, much as she had before, and...   
  
Eirika barely knew the Jehannan mercenary sitting at Innes's end of the table, only a few chairs away from Tana. She knew that her name was Marisa, and that she was fairly deadly with a sword, but she had never really gotten to know the pink-haired woman. She had striking features, to be sure, and a physique that made it clear that the other woman spent at least as much time on the practice field as Eirika did. She was not sure if she would have called the other woman beautiful, but it might have been Eirika's current circumstances that made it hard for her to appreciate the other woman's beauty.   
  
What she did notice was that Marisa was looking directly at her, and that the other woman seemed almost amused. No -- no, she definitely seemed amused, as though she could tell at a glance what was going through Eirika's head. There was something knowing about the other woman's gaze, something that made Eirika want to sink down as low in her chair as she could possibly manage. When she noticed that Eirika had met her gaze, the other woman smiled -- smiled! -- before giving her a slight nod and looking away.    
  
O O O   
  
After the end of the meeting, Eirika found herself torn between lingering outside the room and making a mad dash to get as far away from it as possible. It was a ridiculous impulse, a kind of cowardice that Eirika had never, not ever, displayed on the battlefield. But she felt it regardless, felt her heart beating fast enough that she worried that she was going to collapse right there on the spot.    
  
When, in spite of her body's fight-or-flight response leaning hard in the direction of the latter instinct, she stayed in place and simply turned to look back into the meeting hall, she saw a brief flash of Tana near the back of the room, meeting Eirika's gaze and looking as though she was about to make her way out of the room herself. Then the blue-haired pegasus knight was swiftly eclipsed by someone strikingly different, the very person that Eirika had felt so at odds about meeting now or fleeing from at all possible speed.    
  
L'Arachel closed the distance between them in barely a moment, reaching down to grasp both of Eirika's hands in her own. Before, when L'Arachel had made such friendly gestures, it had given Eirika a bit of comfort, after the initial confusion in the face of such unaccustomed intimacy. But now the feeling of L'Arachel's fingers lacing together with hers, of the feeling of her skin against her own, immediately returned Eirika's face to the same beet red state that it had been in earlier. "My dear," L'Arachel, the pleasure in her voice all too apparent. Did she linger over the second word, or the first? Eirika certainly felt as though she had fallen into the other woman's grip. "It has become rare of late to have a chance to see you after one of these dull affairs," L'Arachel said. "I was beginning to despair of my chances of seeing you face to face like this. Would you like for me to walk you back to your camp?"    
  
Eirika opened her mouth and found an instant later that she simply did not know what to say. What did she want? She had fled in the wake of these meetings for days entirely out of fear of finding herself in private with L'Arachel, in the wake of their encounter in the Rausten princess's rooms. But now, having read the letter that Rennac had carried in L'Arachel's name, Eirika felt like she was being torn in two. "I," Eirika finally said, "yes."   
  
The corners of L'Arachel's mouth tugged upward slightly, and she dropped one of Eirika's hands to instead clasp the other between both of her own. Eirika only felt more as though she had fallen into L'Arachel's grip. "You...yes?" she said, her voice rich with an amusement that managed to be friendly, not mocking. "Should we set off, then, or were there more words you wanted to fit in between those two? I shan't complain of the chance to hear your lovely voice for a while longer."   
  
Eirika felt as though she had been walking around for the last year, or more, wearing heavy armor. Not the armor she wore on the battlefield, but a kind that had protected her from the full impact of L'Arachel's words. The woman had sung Eirika's praises with all the tact and modesty of a tavern bard well on her way through her fifth drink of the night. She had said things exactly like this almost every time that she and Eirika had had occasion to speak. And Eirika had managed to feel nothing, to react with nothing but tolerant amusement, all of L'Arachel's little and not-so-little flirtations plinking off her figurative armor harmlessly.   
  
Somehow, in the very act of clothing Eirika that night, L'Arachel had stripped her bare, and now every one of L'Arachel's words -- her arrows, honed to deadly sharpness and dipped in a poison to set fire to the blood in Eirika's very veins -- were finding their marks.    
  
"Y-yes," Eirika got out, once again unable to tear her gaze from L'Arachel's face, "I would like you as my escort."    
  
With a deft movement, L’Arachel dropped Eirika’s hand only to link arms with her. As Eirika found herself steered down the hallway a moment later, she only caught the briefest glimpse of Tana of Frelia standing in the meeting hall’s doorway -- certainly not a long enough one to discern the stricken look on Tana’s face.    
  
Eirika had only a moment’s respite in which to try and gather her thoughts, as L’Arachel cast a look backwards for some reason, her head angled so that Eirika could not see her expression. But when, a few moments and several footsteps later, L’Arachel turned back to face her, Eirika was faced with the sight of a quite nearly devilish curve to the other princess’s lips. “Your  _escort_ , you say?” L’Arachel asked, her eyes glittering a bit dangerously. “Though I admit it was my hope, I did not realize my missive from yesterday could awaken quite  _that_ much ardor in you, my dear.”   
  
It was a testament to just how frazzled Eirika was that she didn’t understand what L’Arachel was alluding to until several confused seconds had passed. Then, with L’Arachel still watching from entirely too close for Eirika’s comfort, she understood and went utterly scarlet from her head to her toes. “When I said escort -- now, I see, I did not -- I --” She found herself devolving into a desperate stammer, her face as hot as when one of Lute’s fire spells had passed within a few inches of her during a particularly desperate battle.    
  
But L'Arachel was laughing, her laughter as joyful as ever, but much closer than Eirika was in any way used to. It only grew even closer as L'Arachel leaned in slightly, still walking but letting her body lean just barely against Eirika. The closeness alone was enough to stoke a fire in Eirika to match the one that seemed to be just short of scalding every inch of her skin. But then her lips were ghosting against the shell of Eirika's ear in a way that stole the breath from her very throat. "I would be all too happy to provide either service, my lovely Eirika," L'Arachel said, her voice so faint that even had this side of the hallway not been deserted, none could have heard it.    
  
None, save for Eirika.   
  
Eirika, who found herself horrifically, desperately wet, found herself suddenly pulsing with a dangerous heat, and suddenly more aware of L'Arachel's presence against her than she had been of anyone else in her entire life.    
  
A moment later, L'Arachel was walking as she had been, arm in arm with Eirika but otherwise entirely decent in her demeanor, a healthy distance between them save for their locked arms. She was looking forward when Eirika glanced at her, only her usual smile tugging at her lips, that Eirika could see. L'Arachel seemed entirely in command of herself, which was far more than Eirika could say of herself. She had never been more glad of the number of layers she was wearing. She was soaked beyond belief, and knew that every inch of her skin was hot with arousal. Anyone who looked her in the eyes would be able to see it there, the heat in her, the way her focus had altered so powerfully. She remembered how easily the Jehannan woman Marisa had read her only moments ago, and didn't want to think about what she would discern if she was to meet Eirika's eyes now.    
  
Minutes had passed since they had left the meeting room, and Eirika was suddenly aware that the Renaitian "camp" -- the wing of the palace where they were staying at the moment -- was dangerously close. Her own rooms were only a minute or two away. Privacy, something that suddenly seemed dangerous with L'Arachel on her arm, was close enough that Eirika could practically taste it.    
  
She remembered her shameful reaction during the meeting to L'Arachel's mention of taste, and wished that she could sink down right through the floor and be sealed beneath the earth forever. She had grown lewd enough in the last day that a prison akin to the Demon King's was probably suited to her.    
  
Eirika was so lost in her own terrified, desperate thoughts that she didn't realize they had arrived at her door until L'Arachel suddenly turned to face her. She had never felt quite so aware of the few inches' advantage in height that L'Arachel had over her until this very moment. L'Arachel was more distant from her now, but Eirika was still all too aware of how easy it would be for L'Arachel to lean down, to perhaps raise a hand and tilt Eirika's chin up...   
  
L'Arachel said something and Eirika found herself flushing dark again. "Sorry, what was that?"   
  
The other princess smiled again. "You really are set adrift, aren't you?" she said. She sounded almost delighted, which only made Eirika feel that much more embarrassed. "I was saying, I will see you at the banquet tonight." She gave Eirika a little nod, still smiling...then turned around and began to walk away.   
  
...Then stopped. She turned around. “If you like, you can wear what I gave you that night,” she said, her lips curving upward. Only then did she turn once more and begin to walk away in the direction of her own rooms.   
  
Eirika, her heart in her throat, followed the other woman’s progress down the hallway until she finally turned a corner and disappeared. It was only after L’Arachel was gone from view that Eirika finally opened her door and slipped inside.    
  
O O O   
  
Tana of Frelia couldn't quite pay the sumptuous table settings of the banquet any mind that night. She had difficulty paying much attention to anything, in fact. She had always been an eager dancer during the rare gala that her father had thrown in Frelia's capital, but tonight the thought of moving her feet to music felt like something from another life, if not another world entirely.    
  
_"My dear."_   
  
Tana squeezed the glass in her hand, mindful of how easy it would be to break the thing's delicate stem in her grip. She couldn't get the voice out of her head, couldn't make herself focus on anything but what she had seen and heard during and after the meeting today.    
  
She had liked L'Arachel of Rausten, once. The woman had seemed charming, the passion she had thrown into everything she did easily winning Tana over in the beginning of her time as part of Eirika's army. It was only later that Tana had found herself unable to quite feel comfortable around Rausten's princess.    
  
She remembered how distressed her friend had seemed in the last few days. Eirika had never explained to Tana quite what had happened, had only alluded to a conversation with the lady L'Arachel. Tana had been more concerned with Eirika's well-being afterward than with any real hostility toward L'Arachel, but it had certainly hardened something in her, had cemented some of the unease that Tana had begun to feel around L'Arachel not too terribly long after she had joined the army during the war.    
  
It was, of course, Eirika's choice who she chose to gift her affections to, but once she had actually seen the other woman flirt and dally with Eirika in public, giving little gifts and trinkets and praising Eirika's beauty as if said beauty wasn't already obvious to everyone who came into Eirika's vicinity...it had twisted something in Tana, made it harder for her to like L'Arachel. And then, days ago, whatever L'Arachel had said to Eirika...   
  
Tana made herself put the glass down. She walked along the tables, her own pink dress clinging to her figure in a way that she knew her bother of an older brother likely didn't approve of. She had thought of perhaps putting her mind at ease tonight, relaxing with a bit of dancing that would distract her from how...strangely angry she had felt all week. But in the wake of today, she was somehow unwilling to be distracted.    
  
_"My dear."_   
  
Tana felt one of her hands beginning to clench into a fist, and made herself relax it. But...but, by the Stones, she couldn't stand it! She wished she hadn't heard it, wished she could have shut her ears to the sound of L'Arachel's lilting voice as she had spoken to Tana's dearest friend, wished that she could have closed her eyes to the way Eirika had looked back at the emerald-haired bitc --   
  
Tana took a deep breath, then let it out.   
  
...Why did it bother her so? Eirika was her friend. Her dear friend, a friend that she loved, that she would do anything for, but a friend. Why was she so angry?    
  
She didn't know. Or perhaps she didn't want to. But her mind played back the sight of L'Arachel moving smoothly to intercept her before Tana had been able to move to comfort the clearly distraught Eirika in the wake of that meeting. Made her see again the sight -- the one that had curdled her insides, made her bite her lip in a possessive anger that she hadn't understood and hadn't been able to control -- of L'Arachel taking Eirika's hands in her own.    
  
And then, worst of all --   
  
Tana had moved to the door as L'Arachel had taken Eirika's arm and begun to walk her away. Tana had barely been able to see a flash of Eirika's shockingly flushed face -- the sight had made Tana's heart beat harder, made something in her stir in a way she wasn't expecting -- before she had grown distracted by something else.   
  
L'Arachel had looked over her shoulder at Tana, her face hidden from Eirika, and had  _smirked_ , looking directly at Tana, meeting her eyes and raising one eyebrow at the Frelian princess before turning away and beginning to walk away.   
  
The memory of that expression on L'Arachel's face...   
  
Tana snatched a second glass from a server that was passing by and raised it to her lips, worrying for a moment that in her rage she would shatter the thing between her fingers, drenching herself in wine. She saw L'Arachel -- radiantly beautiful in a black dress with emerald trimmings that made her stand out amidst the pastels that most of the crowd were wearing. Tana briefly fantasized about flinging the glass's jagged remains at L'Arachel's face. She bit the inside of her lip.    
  
_Why was she so angry?_   
  
Eirika was her friend, she was a woman that Tana was undoubtedly fond of, and while she might not have been happy about the way L’Arachel seemed to cause more distress than happiness in her friend, if the two were to...if they were to...to pair, then there was nothing for Tana to...to…   
  
It was then, as her thoughts seemed to skip over themselves, that she heard a murmur coming from the entrance to the palace’s central hall, and looked to see what the commotion was.   
  
And felt the air seem to vanish from her lungs all at once.   
  
It was Eirika.   
  
She stood in a dress like many of the others that Tana had seen tonight. Tana had been struck, when she had first arrived on Rausten’s social scene, by how the fittings and the cut of many of the dresses seemed rather less modest than she would have imagined being the case in Magvel’s religious center. Many of the dresses had rather high slashes up to nearly mid-thigh, while others had shockingly deep exposed cleavage, and a stray few had both.    
  
Eirika had both, and where most all of the dresses present in the room were in some flavor of pastel, according to the fashions generally in place, Eirika’s was a rich mix of scarlet and gold, the latter seeming to scintillate beneath the many lights overhead.    
  
Nestled in her bosom -- for the deep cut of the dress’s collar was certainly doing Eirika’s chest a few favors, putting its cleavage on full display -- was a pink sapphire in a silver setting, a pendant that hung from Eirika’s neck.    
  
Tana found herself grateful for the second glass of wine, both for something to cool herself off as well as it offering her something to hide her suddenly scarlet face behind.   
  
She didn’t know what she was feeling, only knew that she felt she needed to go to Eirika’s side. Tana finished her wine -- perhaps not the smartest move, as she certainly felt its impact by now -- then started to cross the hall, wading through dancing couples and chatting groups as she made her way to Eirika.   
  
Only for Eirika’s eyes to seize on something on the other side of the hall. The other woman stiffened, then -- nodding to those who had no doubt greeted her on her arrival -- began to move in the opposite direction as Tana, moving on determined feet. Suddenly, the long banquet tables were effectively a wall between them, and Tana was faced with the prospect of circling the entire hall to reach Eirika.   
  
...Until, following Eirika’s progress, she saw the woman she had been making a beeline for. Coming to a sudden stop, Tana found herself unable to do anything but stare in horror as L’Arachel split off from the group she had been socializing with to meet Eirika on the dance floor. Something passed between them -- Tana couldn’t tell if they spoke -- and a moment later, she saw L’Arachel wrap her arm around Eirika’s waist and begin to guide her into the steps of a dance.    
  
Tana felt something in her come very close to breaking, as she looked down so as not to see the two dancing, so as not to see the utter lack of distance between them. As she came to understand her own feelings in a flash of horrified insight, all Tana could do was stare down at the floor and bite her lip.   
  
O O O   
  
Moving on the dance floor, her feet moving more or less instinctively, Eirika was more aware of L'Arachel's arm wrapped around her waist than she had been of almost anything over the course of her life. But it was far from an unwelcome presence. The moments that had passed between them earlier today had set her heart to hammering in her chest with some mixture of desire and fright, but now, Eirika simply couldn't manage to feel fear.    
  
L'Arachel's arm was around her, and somehow Eirika's uncertainly as to what it was, exactly, she felt toward the other woman had dissolved to nothing, been washed away in the tide of desire that seemed to have rendered her body hotter than it had ever been, from toes to crown.    
  
The other princess hadn't spoken yet, had simply looked at Eirika for a moment before taking her in her arms and guiding her into the dance that they were now moving in. But now she spoke, her lips once again close to Eirika's ear. "I couldn't believe it, the first time I saw you in that dress. Me, rendered mute with desire, when I had always been so...loud about it until then." Eirika felt L'Arachel's smile stretch her lips against her ear.   
  
The princess of Renais let out a breathless laugh. "I didn't know what to think. I didn't..." She closed her mouth, not sure what she had been about to say. Instead, she leaned harder into L'Arachel, letting the other woman guide the dance.    
  
"I didn't want to let you leave," L'Arachel said, her voice even quieter, and Eirika felt a thrill of heat spike up her spine. "If I hadn't felt rooted to the floor in shock, I might have tackled you to the ground, my dear." There was something wicked in her tone, now. They twirled, briefly separating. Eirika felt certain, as she had in the meeting hall, that the electric current passing between her and L'Arachel must have been turning heads, but other than a few looks of interest -- nothing more acute than the looks had been when she had first arrived in this dress -- they were just another dancing couple.   
  
Another couple. Eirika felt her throat tighten.    
  
"I can only say that I'm sorry for not realizing it before," L'Arachel continued as they came back together, both a little breathless.    
  
"Realizing...realizing what?" Eirika asked, her heart beating swiftly as much from the moment as from the dancing.   
  
"That I wanted you," L'Arachel said, stating her case baldly. "Because I do, Eirika. I think it came across in my letter, but I wanted to say it face to face, so that you would understand."   
  
Eirika made herself meet L'Arachel's eyes as the dance came to an end. As the steps required, L'Arachel tugged Eirika to her even as Eirika -- feeling extremely daring -- lifted one leg to all but wrap it around one of L'Arachel's hips. The movement bared her own thigh thanks to the slit in her dress, and for a split second, Eirika was more embarrassed by that than she felt anything else.    
  
But then, as L'Arachel tugged her closer, Eirika became aware of the hardness pressing against her, the bar of heat that was flush against the crux of her legs, with only the fabric of both their dresses separating them.    
  
L'Arachel stared Eirika directly in the eye, her expression baring neither embarrassment nor shame as the dance, as the contact between them, exposed something about her that Eirika had never known. The only thing Eirika could see in L'Arachel's eyes was desire, fervent and naked and burning like the sun, heating her face, seeming to heat Eirika's entire body.    
  
They separated as the song finally concluded, but the distance that opened between them was only slight. "You arrived late to the dance, my dear," L'Arachel said, her voice nearly a purr. "Look around you. Many of the people invited are already leaving. No one would question it if you left as well. There are many people who came here only to make a token appearance, after all."   
  
Eirika couldn't tear her eyes from L'Arachel's, just had been the case before during the meeting. She barely understood what L'Arachel was saying. The words were nothing to her, but the import carried through crystal clear, and Eirika's heart was beating like a drum, sending hot blood coursing through her body. All she could do was keep listening, rapt, her lips parted.   
  
"No one will pay any heed to where you go afterward," L'Arachel continued. "And I think I feel ready to retire as well...it is a good thing that my uncle was the one holding this little party, not myself, or I would have to say until the very end...yes, I think I'll return to my rooms," she finally said, letting Eirika go. She looked nearly ready to catch Eirika a moment later, as the princess of Renais seemed as though she might fall, having put a little too much security into the way she leaned into the arm wrapped around her waist.    
  
L'Arachel walked away, then, smiling...then said over her shoulder, "I hope to see you soon, my dear."   
  
Eirika stood there watching for several long moments, as L'Arachel's feet carried her swiftly through the crowd.    
  
Then, she started to move too.    
  
It might have been more proper to wait until L'Arachel had properly escaped the hall, to wait until no rumors might pass on account of their leaving at nearly the same time, and both so swiftly. But Eirika, in that moment, couldn't pay any heed to what other people might say. She couldn't think at all about what was safe or proper. She was so utterly focused on what she wanted -- on where her desires were taking her -- that she didn't even notice as she passed by a certain blue-haired princess on her way out of the banquet hall. Her feet carried her out in a flash in spite of the heels she was wearing, and then she was only just barely resisting the urge to pull the footwear off and make a mad dash after L'Arachel.    
  
She had been driven mad, of course. She had wondered if there was something wrong with her, if her mind had somehow plummeted into the gutter as a result of L'Arachel's letter, but now Eirika thought that this sickness must have been in her all along. She felt as though she had a fever, as though she was walking through water. The world seemed slow, and the fastest she could walk in heels certainly wasn't fast enough for her tastes. Perhaps nothing could have been.    
  
All she could think about was the feeling of L'Arachel's arm around her waist...that bar of heat that had pressed unrelentingly against her, something she had never known or guessed about the other woman in all their time fighting together. L'Arachel wasn't the first woman she had met like that, of course, but she was the first that Eirika had felt so unbearably drawn to, and now that heat was all that Eirika's mind could seem to focus on. It was haunting her as she walked, tugging her forward, pushing her from behind. If anyone could have seen how unbearably flushed she was, it would have been a thing of scandal, if they hadn't immediately tried to escort her to the nearest healer instead.    
  
It wasn't long before she found herself before L'Arachel's door. She had only come here a handful of times, but in the wake of what thad passed between them here earlier in the week, there was nothing Eirika could have done to forget the way here. She raised a hand, then stopped.   
  
She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to do, or what L'Arachel would do when she arrived.    
  
She certainly didn't want to think about what she might, perhaps, want L'Arachel to do, in her heart of hearts. She didn't want to surrender to the indecency in her, to the lewd thoughts that were pressing in on her consciousness.    
  
In the end, she just knocked once before bringing her hands down to her sides as swiftly as she could. She was terrified of where they might go, of what she might try to touch if she let them clasp before herself.    
  
The door opened in her flash, and Eirika was utterly certain that L'Arachel had been waiting all this time, right on her own side of the door. Perhaps she had been that certain that Eirika would come, or perhaps she had just hoped that fervently. She couldn't know, didn't know, didn't even care. She just stepped through the entryway past L'Arachel.   
  
L'Arachel closed the door behind her. "Part of me thinks you shouldn't have come," L'Arachel said, and suddenly all her confidence and control from the banquet was gone. All her easy certainty in the things she had been saying was gone, replaced by...by...   
  
Eirika turned to look at L'Arachel, and the other woman looked like one possessed. She was utterly flushed. Her face was coated in sweat, and her done-up hair from before now clung to her face. It was as though the L'Arachel that Eirika had seen at the banquet had been a mask, of sorts. "Why shouldn't I have?" Eirika could only breathe out.    
  
"Because now you're alone with me, my dear," L'Arachel said simply, stepping closer. Her hands twitched at her sides, as though the other woman was only barely keeping herself from moving them.    
  
"I want to be," Eirika said, and was shocked at her own boldness. But coming here had stripped away any veneer or facade of decency that she might have put claim to before now. She couldn't hide and pretend that she didn't want this, and so if she couldn't...well,l she might as well be proud of her own desires, right?   
  
"You don't know what being alone with me means, Eirika," L'Arachel said, and finally her hands moved, lifting up to clasp both of Eirika's bare shoulders. "You don't know how badly I want you. What I want. You don't..."   
  
"I want to know, though," Eirika said, surprising herself. "Show me, L'Arachel. Don't hide anything from me. I feel like you've been hiding yourself from me for all this time. Somehow, in spite of how...loud you were being," Eirika said, smiling, "you really weren't saying everything. So say it all. Show me all of you. I want to see all of you, feel all of y--mnnph?!"   
  
It was then that the distance between them closed, snapped shut in a flash, L'Arachel moving like lighting as she pulled Eirika close to her. Her mouth descended on Eirika's, moving without hesitation or shame, and Eirika didn't bother to fake either as she pressed herself against L'Arachel's entire body. Their dresses felt as though they might not have been there in the first place, as though they barely registered. Eirika could feel the other woman's heat against her, the softness of her breasts against her own even as --   
  
For a moment Eirika couldn't think, as one of L'Arachel's hands descended to reach down and grasp her rear -- her ass -- and pull Eirika even more closely to herself. Suddenly, that bar of heat was pressing far more insistently against Eirika than it had before. Suddenly, it felt like too much.    
  
Eirika wanted to touch it.    
  
The sudden desire, the sudden, hot intent in her mind shocked her, sent her into a dizzy spiral as the kiss continued. She reached up with her own hands, both of them briefly sliding against L'Arachel's belly between them, against the soft fabric of the dress and the heat beneath. But then she let one hand slide down, let it inch lower and lower before her palm and fingers slid to cup the heat and hardness through the fabric of L'Arachel's dress. She was gratified by the hot moan that L'Arachel let out into Eirika's mouth. She began to slide her palm and fingers up and down a few inches, let them move with fervent urgency. She wanted to squeeze it, but there wasn't enough slack in the dress to properly get her fingers around it, so she could only rub it through the fabric, wishing that it was gone, wishing that there was nothing between them at all, not even clothing.    
  
Eirika couldn't feel any shock or shame at how lewd her thoughts had become so swiftly. She didn't care. She just let herself lean harder into the kiss, her hand moving faster. She relished the sounds that L'Arachel made, the uncertain shock that she registered in her eyes when she opened her own to look at L'Arachel. But she wanted more.    
  
She needed more.    
  
Her hand moving fast enough that she could feel it growing warmer from the friction of the dress, Eirika moved her other hand to cup one of L'Arachel's breasts through her dress. This time, L'Arachel let out something like a squeal, and suddenly Eirika found herself thrust away by the hand still left on her shoulder.    
  
For a moment, Eirika was terrified that she had crossed some line, that she had been too much of a filthy -- a sick, a, a, some sort of harlot -- but then she saw the naked desire still present in L'Arachel's eyes. "W-wait," L'Arachel said, then started to reach down and unfasten, unbutton, unzip various things that Eirika was too desperate to really understand. Her own breathing ragged, she felt like she might groan out with her need, that she might scream with her desire.    
  
But then, with one last handful of nervous movements of L'Arachel's fingers, the entire apparatus of her dress from the waist down collapsed to the ground around her legs.    
  
Eirika was immediately aware of a few things. First, L'Arachel had worn nothing beneath her dress. The second, by virtue of the first, was that L'Arachel was more generously endowed than anyone else Eirika had ever seen with a cock. Her shaft was like something out of some sort of lewd scrivening by some, some indecent scribe of smut that she would never have been caught dead reading. Her balls were just as shocking to Eirika, heavy-looking and hairless. Eirika felt a sudden, shocking urge that she was hard-pressed to resist, when the things she was seeing were right there for the taking, so to speak.    
  
L'Arachel looked uncertain for a moment, but any worry she might have been feeling at Eirika's reaction seemed to fade as she took in the actual expression on Eirika's face. Could she discern the need in Eirika's eyes? Were Eirika's lips parted in hunger? Was she so transparently a slut for what L'Arachel had suddenly put on display for her? Eirika couldn't guess, only knew that L'Arachel was suddenly smiling, and that there certainly was some kind of hunger in the other woman's expression.    
  
"I've wanted you, Eirika," L'Arachel finally said, closing the distance between them again, stepping over the fallen remains of most of her dress. She still wore her heels for now, but otherwise she was nude from the waist down. "Do you see how I've wanted you?"    
  
"Yes," Eirika breathed out, and then L'Arachel was pulling her close again, both hands now cupping Eirika's rear through the dress and yanking her hard to herself. For a moment they didn't kiss. All Eirika could do was breathe in, practically suck in the scent that was now in the air between them. She suddenly had a vivid memory present itself to her, the memory of when she had first opened the letter that L'Arachel had sent her. The distinct scent that had clung to the paper was now crystal clear in Eirika's mind. It had been the scent of L'Arachel's desire, she must have written it in the midst of her own terrible need. The image sent Eirika's mind spiralling, as did that scent, as did the feeling of L'Arachel's hands squeezing her ass like she was some shameless trollop, some paid and kept woman of the night.    
  
Eirika wasn't aware of the way the thrill in her spiked at that particular thought, she only understood that her own need was climbing, soaring, growing ever more desperate.    
  
"Do you feel it now," L'Arachel practically pleaded, bucking her hips against Eirika. And Eirika did feel it, felt that heat against her, with the flimsy material of her dress hardly any decent barrier between them.    
  
"Yes," Eirika moaned, and then reached down and grasped L'Arachel's shaft directly.    
  
The heat she felt, the nearly electric charge that passed between them, the look of shocked bliss on L'Arachel's face, all of it passed into Eirika's mind in an instant, but at the same time, none of it mattered. None of it could matter, when a cock was in her hand and Eirika could feel it, could feel the beaded moisture running down it smearing across her fingers and palm.    
  
She started to stroke it, her mind suddenly empty of thought. L'Arachel said something, or moaned it, but Eirika was too busy stroking the cock in her hand to pay her enough mind. She was too busy stimulating it with her fingers, too busy claiming it for herself. SHe had no idea what was happening to her, no idea where the sudden lewdness in her heart had emerged from. She just knew that it felt good, that every inch of her was pulsing with energy and heat. She felt herself utterly, completely soaked, and wanted nothing more than to be able to rip her dress out of the way as L'Arachel had, nothing more than to feel this thing in her hand against her cunt instead.    
  
"I asked, do you want it?" L'Arachel said, evidently repeating herself. She looked unbearably uncertain, but at the same time she looked utterly driven by the same eagerness that Eirika was also feeling.    
  
"Yes," Eirika breathed out, still jerking L'Arachel off. There was no other way to put it. As precum formed, it helped, making it easier for Eirika to give L'Arachel a more lubricated stroke, a more pleasurable experience, which in turn caused more precum to form. "I do, you have no idea," she gasped out.   
  
"And here I thought I had become the lewd one," L'Arachel said, laughing lightly, but still bucking her hips, driving her cock against Eirika's hand and dress with eager thrusts. "Maybe we're both lewd. Maybe we're made for each other."   
  
"Yes," Eirika said, feeling like a broken record, but all she could seem to voice in these moments was enthusiastic assent. "Yes, yes, please, give it to me, I want to feel it all over me," she pleaded. She barely had any idea what she was saying.    
  
"That's a tall order," L'ARachel said, "But I think I might be able to manage."   
  
"Don't think it, do it," Eirika said, and her voice was needy and eager.    
  
She might look back on this with shame, with utter shock at her own demeanor and words, but in the moment, all Eirika wanted was for L'Arachel to use her with every bit of fervency that the other woman had displayed over the course of the night. She wanted her own dress to be gone. Wanted to feel L'Arachel without it.    
  
But then she felt L'Arachel with it, and suddenly, the dress felt like far less of a barrier.    
  
Without warning, L'Arachel came, spurting again and again against Eirika, jetting out spurt after spurt of something hot and thick and heavy against the crotch and belly and chest of Eirika's dress. She felt the thick, wet substance soaking through her dress and weighing it down, felt her dress suddenly clinging to her. And most excitingly, most capable of just shutting Eirika's mind down in an instant, she could smell it.    
  
She could smell L'Arachel's cum in the air, felt it like ambrosia hitting her senses all at once. Felt her mind suddenly seem to sway, felt her brain seem to give in to the very same fever she had felt in hurrying to this very room. She gasped in mouthful after mouthful of cum-scented air, and suddenly Eirika had no idea who she was anymore. Had no idea what had happened to her, that the mere scent of something so sinful could drive her so wild.    
  
She wanted to taste it.    
  
Eirika could finally think, but all she could think about was how badly she wanted to taste the substance that L'ARachel had just sprayed so liberally around her dress, coating her body in it.    
  
"i'm sorry," L'Arachel, sounding horribly conflicted, only to let out a yelp of shock as Eirika closed the distance between them.    
  
Now it was Eirika that rutted against the other woman, Eirika that leaned up to seize L'ARachel's lips in a hot kiss that she couldn't quite control. Her mouth roved over the other woman's, her tongue delving deep, and Eirika didn't even have the proper presence of mind to think about how lewd this was, how crude she was being. But when she broke the kiss, it was only to start pulling L'Arachel toward her, taking unsteady backward steps. "Against the wall," she whined out.    
  
L'Arachel's eyes widened, and for a moment, Eirika thought that perhaps, just perhaps, she had gone too far. That she had proven herself too lewd, too much of a wanton slut in the end to suit a woman like her friend. But then L'Arachel was slamming her forward, her hands on Eirika's hips and gripping her dress, yanking it by the slit and pulling it up to the side, bunching it up until it was out of the way of what they both wanted.    
  
Suddenly, L'Arachel was rutting against her, only Eirika's panties in the way, and it was like Eirika had somehow stumbled into some sick, feverish dream, like something she might have dreamt in the wake of reading that letter. L'Arachel was gripping her by the hips and rutting against her like an animal, her cock sliding up and down Eirika's soaked panties, and all Eirika wanted to do was to rip the flimsy, half-ruined undergarment out of her way, but she couldn't bare to tear her hands from where they were so forcefully gripping L'Arachel's shoulders.    
  
"L'Arachel," Eirika panted out, practically gasped as she shuddered in came from nothing but the friction, the glorious contact, even through her ruined panties. "Lara, Lara, Lara please --"    
  
"I want you," L'Arachel ground out in return, "I love you so much, I wanted this so badly, please, please let it be good, is it good, I want it to be --" But then L'Arachel finally seemed to lose the power of speech entirely, only rutting again and again against Eirika's barely-clothed cunt. When she came, Eirika felt it against her panties and through them, against her thighs, sprayed up past her bunched up dress to coat her belly in thick white spunk. And L'Arachel only kept grinding against Eirika afterward, Eirika's panties now utterly filthy with a comingling of Eirika's juices and L'Arachel's thick spunk. The filmy piece of nothing ceased to offer any real friction or any real protection; it might as well not have been there, from how sensitively Eirika could feel every stroke of L'Arachel's length up and down her pussy.    
  
They kissed again, L'Arachel with a desperate hunger for intimacy, and Eirika surrendering utterly to the other woman's passion, too dizzy from the thought-consuming scent of L'Arachel's cum to be able to think clearly.    
  
When Eirika seemed to come to herself, L'Arachel was almost leaning against her for support, panting raggedly, her hands finally having released Eirika's thighs -- Eirika almost thought she could feel the other woman's palm prints on her skin there -- to instead brace against the wall to either side of her.    
  
Eirika couldn't think. She couldn't even seem to move. She felt limp as a rag, hung up to dry against the wall.    
  
L'Arachel finally looked up at her, and the Renaitian princess swallowed at the look of mingled affection and rue on the other woman's face. "I didn't," L'Arachel said, "I didn't quite mean...for things to happen..." She looked down, and Eirika was all too aware of the feeling of the cum on and beneath her dress to have forgotten. "This way," L'Arachel finally finished somewhat lamely.    
  
Eirika couldn't say what she was thinking. That she wanted more, that somehow something had awakened inside her, that she wanted things she wasn't sure that L'Arachel would be ready or comfortable about giving.    
  
She wanted to taste L'Arachel's cum directly, wanted to taste it in the most direct way possible. Wanted to feel it against her lips, in her mouth, with nothing between the two of them.    
  
She could hardly say to the princess of Rausten that she wanted to get on her knees and take the girl's cock in her mouth like some...like some sort of...   
  
But before Eirika could finish that thought, L'Arachel took a step back. "I...can..." She looked lost for words again for a moment, looking down at Eirika, her face utterly flushed. "I can lend you one of my cloaks? That might be...the most..." She closed her mouth. "I'm so sorry."   
  
"D-don't be," Eirika say, her face flushing. But what else could she say? L'Arachel all too clearly saw what had been done to Eirika as a thing of terrible shame, but Eirika felt awakened, felt like she wanted more. Wanted more quite desperately, in fact.    
  
"A cloak, then," L'Arachel said, avoiding Eirika's gaze as she moved to her wardrobe. Eirika felt unbearably tired at the prospect of walking. Did not, in fact, want to leave at all. But it was clear that L'Arachel was feeling...if not regret, at least shame, and Eirika didn't know how to comfort the other woman, take away those negative feelings, without confessing to her own terrible shame. So she just continued to catch her breath, leaning there against the wall, the scent of cum that clung to her keeping the fire in her from ever quite dying down.    
  
She was still quite wet.    
  
When L'Arachel returned to her, Eirika tiredly pushed herself from the wall and accepted L'Arachel's help in putting it on. For a moment, L'Arachel's hands settled onto her shoulders again, but then she lifted her hands as if burned. As if afraid of what she might do. Eirika wanted nothing more than to stay and find out exactly that, but for now she went along with how L'Arachel was clearly feeling.    
  
O O O   
  
After Eirika left, L'Arachel slumped against the now-closed door, barely thinking about locking it before letting her mind run over what had just happened.    
  
What had just happened?   
  
She had just utterly befouled her best friend, had just soiled the woman she loved -- her lover? Were they lovers? -- with her own hot seed, again and again. She hadn't even been able to give Eirika satisfaction in the way she deserved before sending her away in her own shame -- and fear of what she might do next.    
  
And yet...   
  
L'Arachel groaned helplessly as she resisted the urge to rut against the door itself. She was still hard. She was still stiff with need. Need at the thought of Eirika's expression, at the memory of how very eagerly Eirika had participated -- more than that, how she had actively guided L'Arachel to do more.    
  
And L'Arachel had wanted to do more. Still did. Had she been wrong to send Eirika away? Suddenly, she felt terribly aware and afraid that she might very well have miscommunicated her feelings tonight, that just like the first time Eirika had worn the dress that L'Arachel had just ruined, she might have given Eirika the wrong idea.    
  
As if by instinct, she crossed the room to her writing desk. She grasped desperately for a pen and reached for a sheet of good stationary. She had to...she had to salvage this somehow. Somehow.   
  
O O O   
  
The next day, Eirika awoke to a head full of embarrassing memories -- hot, awful, horny, monstrous memories that already had her wet first thing in the morning -- and a letter slipped beneath her door. It wasn't the done thing, mail was usually delivered in person, but Eirika found herself surging out of bed immediately nonetheless. She was nude, not having been able to bear going to sleep with even her undergarments on, given their...condition.    
  
Almost unwillingly, Eirika glanced over to the pile of clothing in the far corner of the room. She hadn't wanted to put it in her hamper, fearful of what the reaction might be if the launderer came by and found the telltale scent -- a scent that made Eirika shudder to breathe in -- among Eirika's other things. That was the sort of thing that might start genuinely harmful rumors. Not that Eirika had been able to think of such things while L'Arachel had been rutting against her like an animal the previous night.    
  
Flushing dark at the previous night's memories, Eirika picked up the letter and crossed over to her desk, picking up a letter opener and putting the blade to work immediately. Slicing the envelope open, she pulled the letter itself out and splayed it across her desk.    
  
This time, when she took in that scent, she knew exactly what it was, having smelled so very much of it the night before. L'Arachel must have set herself to writing this almost as soon as Eirika had left the night before. Her heart thudding in her chest, Eirika leaned forward and began to read.    
  
_My lovely Eirika_ , the letter began,  _I cannot begin to apologize enough for the way last night ended._   
  
_I do not want you to bear the wrong idea in your heart, a heart that I cherish so dearly, my beloved._ Eirika smiled helplessly at the way L’Arachel put such endearments -- ones that Eirika couldn’t help but take more seriously now -- down on paper without so much as a shred of shame or embarrassment.  _While I cannot regret our joining, I do regret that I let things end that way. I did not want you to think that I do not want you. I should have asked you to stay, perhaps, but in the moment, I was too afraid that I had stepped over some threshold of propriety --_   
  
_It feels foolish to put such words down on paper in the first place, after the intimacy we found between us, and that I already cherish so deeply. The only improper thing that happened last night was that I did not ask whether you wanted to say before I sent you away in my horror in shame._   
  
_I am sorry for what I did to your dress, which you looked so beautiful in. But can I say that you looked any less beautiful in it after our coupling, my beloved? No, I do not believe so. Radiant and clean at the banquet, or sweaty and coated in my seed in my rooms, it doesn’t matter, my beloved. My heart races at the thought of you, no matter how much or how little clothing or cum you wear._   
  
Eirika stared down at the page in her hands, for a moment unable to read any further. How was L’Arachel capable of writing things like this without erupting into flame? Eirika herself felt like she was about to.    
  
_So I apologize, not for what we did, but that we did not do more. Not for some imagined shame, for what shame could lay between us, my love? But for not trusting in your desire, for not asking you outright what you wanted._   
  
_I told myself that I had not wanted things to become so...fervent so quickly, but I lied to myself. I want to show you exactly how much desire my body and heart hold for you, Eirika, my love. I want to push you against the wall and breed you like a Queen._ Eirika felt herself flush.  _I want to throw you down to my bed and make love to you like I’m acting out some poet’s bawdy song. Eirika, my love, my woman, I want to take you by the hair, throw you down onto your hands and knees, and fuck you like a Jehannan whore._   
  
L’Arachel’s words -- those last few words -- slammed into Eirika’s mind like a sledgehammer, shattering it to a thousand pieces and leaving her thoughts in disarray. She wasn’t flushed any more. She was on fire. Her skin was as red as most of her dress had been last night.    
  
_What_ ?   
  
What, what had just happened in her heart and mind? Eirika looked down again, having to force her eyes back down to the parchment.    
  
_...throw you down onto your hands and knees, and fuck you like a Jehannan whore._   
  
Eirika’s heart was beating harder in her chest than it ever had, something sick and twisted taking hold in her as she read those words. Stones, what was wrong with her?   
  
_...and fuck you like a Jehannan whore._   
  
_...like a Jehannan whore._   
  
There was more to the letter, but Eirika was adrift, finally adrift, just as L’Arachel had so gently teased her about at the meeting. She was alone at sea, tossed about by waves of desire that she couldn’t understand or control.    
  
It took her several moments to realize that she was rubbing her clit, and then, only because of the needy moan that had escaped her throat. What was  _wrong_ with her? She couldn’t, she couldn’t be touching herself to such thoughts like some, like some...some trollop, some…   
  
She looked down.   
  
_...like a Jehannan whore._   
  
_Most of all, my love, I want to be with you. Please, let us meet in town today. They can spare you on the patrol for a day, my love, so let me walk with you, let me hold hands with you, and when we are done, let me fulfill the promise I have made, here, in this letter, when we return to my rooms._   
  
_Yours,_   
  
_L’Arachel._   
  
Eirika was trembling helplessly, her hand still on herself, unable to look away. She wanted to scream at the words she saw at the page, at how relentlessly bawdy L’Arachel had proven herself to be, and yet here Eirika was, rubbing herself like a --   
  
_Jehannan whore_ , her mind traitorously supplied. She let out a desperate pant at the thought.    
  
She was barely thinking as she crossed the room, wasn’t thinking at all as she moved to where she had abandoned her clothing from the night before. As she lifted up one garment in particular and moved back to her bed, climbing onto her hands and knees and beginning to stroke her clit ever more forcefully as she took a deep, trembling, shameful breath of her own, still-wet, thickly cum-soaked panties. Seconds later, her fingers were curling in her own cunt as she took eager, desperate pants of the heady scent of L’Arachel’s seed and continued to think those traitorous thoughts.    
  
_Jehannan whore._   
  
_Jehannan whore._   
  
_Jehannan whore._   
  



	3. Pastry

Tana of Frelia sat in her rooms at the royal palace of Rausten, and wished, in some vicious, hitherto unexplored corner of her heart, that she could just burn the whole place down, with herself inside it.    
  
_Tana stared at the other girl, at the teal-haired princess that she had once thought herself an expert on. She had seen herself as Eirika’s one true friend -- at the very least, her deepest friend, so -- why -- how --_   
  
_“I’m not sure I understand,” she said weakly, trying to keep her voice from betraying the fault line that had formed at the banquet the night before, or the way her heart was thumping in her chest out of something akin to mortal terror._   
  
_The worst part was how excited Eirika looked. Tana had never seen this flush to Eirika's cheeks, this look akin to exhilaration on her friend's face. She had never seen Eirika looking this way at all, in all the years that Tana had known her, and Tana felt a rich surge of jealousy that someone else had brought this out in Eirika. That someone else, not her, had managed to bring out this new happiness in her. It was a petty, awful feeling, and Tana felt it to the hilt, felt it like a dagger easing slowly between her ribs, inching toward her rapidly beating heart._   
  
_"We're -- together," Eirika said, that flush still present on her cheeks as she seemed to struggle to decide whether or not she wanted to look Tana in the eyes or not. "L'Arachel -- oh, Tana, I don't know how to explain it. I don't know if I can."_   
  
_"The Princess is -- Rausten's princess, she's..." Tana struggled to find a kind, respectful word for the other woman. Her head felt as if it had given way to a cacophony of curses. "She is charming. And...energetic."_   
  
_Tana didn't miss the way that Eirika's face seemed to flush even darker at that last word, and felt another surge of worry. She had meant it as a veiled insult. L'Arachel's tendency to charge into each and every situation as if it was the climax in some demented novel, whether she was in the middle of a battle or eating breakfast at the dining hall table in full view of her people, had always struck her as laughable. Perhaps she had seen it as genuinely charming when they had first met, but as L'Arachel had made her interest in Eirika increasingly clear throughout the war, Tana's perception of her behavior had seemed to sour. She hadn't known why at the time, but now..._   
  
_"Oh, Tana, I hardly know what to do. I think -- I think we may be going out today?" The Renaitian princess looked nervous, nervous to an extent that Tana had, again, never really seen in her friend. And it was a nervousness that seemed far out of pace with a simple date, some casual stroll with a would-be lover._   
  
_Lover._   
  
_Tana had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from letting out a dissatisfied noise at that thought, at that mental image. No. It couldn't be really happening. "Are you sure...Eirika, are you entirely positive that she is...I mean, she has been 'courting' you in the past, has she not?"_   
  
_Eirika let out a sigh. It was almost dreamy. Tana felt a heat rising in her, something between jealousy and anger, tinged with despair. "Oh, Tana, if you had only...I don't know if I could bear you actually seeing it, it's far too embarrassing to think of, but...she has become...different, of late." Again, that flush to her cheeks._   
  
_Tana took in a deep breath through her nose. "Eirika, even you seem different of late. I -- I am glad -- it gladdens my heart --" She lied through her teeth, lied desperately. "-- to see you...like this...In all my time as your friend I don't know if I've seen you like this...but don't you have a patrol today? Do you mean to shirk it?"_   
  
_Eirika's face reddened further, but she shrugged, turning her face to the window and looking out on the castle town beneath them. "I have always thrown myself into my duty with the patrols, there is no shortage of men and women who have wanted to take my place and give me a break that, well, I didn't want. Until. Until now." She looked askance at Tana, her face still tilted to the window, the morning light rendering her face as divine as it had always looked. As it had always looked, with Tana ignoring it until now, not truly noticing the beauty that had been staring her in the face all this time, just as she had somehow contrived not to notice her own feelings. "As I recall, you've long been one of them. Didn't you say just the other day that I deserved a time for myself?"_   
  
_Tana wanted to reach back through time, reach for her past of a few days prior and throttle her. "I -- I suppose I'm just worried for you," Tana finally said lamely._   
  
_Eirika looked a little let down, but -- and awfully, Tana almost resented this most of all -- seemed to perk up shortly afterward. "Well, please do not worry, my friend." The word had never sounded so bitter to Tana until now. "Be happy for me, and hope that today doesn't fall all to disaster. I...I truly do want the day to go well..." She looked uncertain, then sighed. "Oh, Tana, I wish I could explain her to you. If I had the words, I know I could make you understand."_   
  
_'I don't want to understand,' was all that Tana wanted to say._   
  
_And that was too much, too bitter, far too beyond the pale for Tana, even in her wrecked state, to ever say to the woman she -- the girl she had always -- to Eirika, who --_   
  
_She stewed in the words she couldn't say, that she couldn't even bring herself to think in the privacy of her own mind. To think it was to voice it, in a way, and if she voiced it then she made it real. Not that it could ever be real in true, now that that Rausten harpy had swooped in and taken what Tana had not, until now, even realized she wanted._   
  
Now, in the privacy of her own rooms, Tana of Frelia took solace in a bottle.    
  
It was not a habit that she had ever cultivated, not one that she thought anyone in her family had ever truly indulged in. Oh, she had been at parties -- typically among the other pegasus knights -- where a bottle might have been passed around, spirits making the rounds as the tight-knit group unwound in the wake of a particularly long patrol of Frelia's skies. Even then, she had abstained, for any kind of untoward behavior would have been unbecoming of a princess. She hadn't felt deprived, either; alcohol had never really called to Tana with any kind of allure, even of the forbidden. She had wanted to wander the world more than she had wanted to get soused.    
  
Now, however, soused was exactly what she wanted to be. She wanted to be sodden, woozy, forgetful with drink. She wanted to forget all of this.    
  
She tilted the bottle back with unpracticed hands, swallowed the sharp, biting liquor with an unpracticed throat. The taste of it would have driven her away from the bottle after only a sip, on any other day, but she was actively chasing oblivion, and so the awfulness she could feel burning its way down her throat wasn't enough to stop her from continuing. She wanted more, needed more, and would have it, until she was well and truly blitzed. No one would bother her, when she had made a point of cancelling any appointments she had planned to keep today. She was alone, and would remain so until sleep took her.    
  
Alone...   
  
O O O   
  
Marisa of Jehanna had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.    
  
She had seen it, of course. She had been able to plot the trajectory of these two for something like a week, been able to track the arcs they would travel in the same way she had always been able to instinctively plot the path of a sword's tip in the moments before it pierced a foe’s armor. The one from Rausten had been stewing in it for the longest, of course -- and gods if that hadn't been entertaining to watch, and in public, to boot -- while the Renaitian lass had been stewing in her own shock and growing lust for nearly as long.    
  
She had always been a little irritated at the sight of two lovebirds on a day like this, but it became far more interesting to her when she knew just how badly the two wanted to jump each others' bones at the end of it.   
  
Marisa hadn't meant to follow the two like this. It had been a shock to even see them out on the town together, when Eirika was so publicly addicted to overwork and L'Arachel's constant noble-style flirting had fallen on deaf ears for the better part of a year.    
  
But once she had seen them out here, it had been almost instinctive, staying a block or so behind them. She rationalized it as bodyguard work, keeping a distance so that her client -- clients -- could have the illusion of privacy but remain safe. She followed them that way for several minutes, noting the way they occasionally leaned into each other.    
  
There was a quality to their intimacy that made Marisa feel almost certain that something had happened last night, whether at the banquet or after it. They weren't holding themselves -- or each other -- like two people hovering on the verge of finally letting loose and just rutting each other into the ground. They were moving like two people who had already known each other in that primal way.    
  
Not that it wasn't also perfectly clear that the two wanted desperately to be in private. Marisa had to struggle not to laugh when she saw L'Arachel stop at a stall where chocolates and other sweets were being served, bought a little bag of no doubt overpriced candies, and somehow persuaded the usually reserved Eirika to accept one of them from L'Arachel's own fingers past her lips. Even Marisa couldn't help but feel a little spike of desire at that. L'Arachel wasn't bad.    
  
In time, though, she'd finally had enough of playing voyeur and continued on her business. She wasn't precisely working for Prince Innes, but he had made it clear that he was willing to give her regular pay to snoop on occasion throughout the city, to be an extra set of eyes sympathetic to the Frelian crown -- or at least somewhat loyal to Innes's pocketbook, which he wasn't shy about using to pay her or the other mercenaries in his regular employ. Far more delicately, he had also requested that she keep an eye on his sister from time to time -- a request that had made her want to draw her sword and press it against his neck, given her history with Tana.    
  
Don't think about it, she thought, flattening her mouth into a line as she walked in the direction of the palace, her path diverging from L'Arachel and Eirika's. Don't think about it for even a moment.    
  
Marisa found it easy enough to cross the distance between where her idling had taken her and the castle environs. She had spent the better part of her first month here getting used to the ins and outs of Rausten's capital, and she had grown fairly adept at navigating its back alleys. The streets were thronged today -- laborers and caterers who had been employed for the banquet last night were out in force to spend their coin -- but she managed to avoid the worst of the crowds and reach the palace relatively quickly. She at least didn't feel as though she had wasted her time.    
  
She didn't make a beeline for Tana's rooms. That would be suspicious, might be noted. Or it might not, but she had learned paranoia as a skill during her time as a mercenary, and it had served her well. She didn't want anyone important to know that she had any kind of relationship with the princess worth noting, and stones knew that if Innes's own spies got wind of her being so sloppy, she would likely find herself facing a lecture from the man that would end with her fist colliding with his face.    
  
Instead, she cut through the servants' area of the castle, then the kitchens. She spent a brief time conversing with Franz -- the man was still counted among Renais's knights, but had taken a leave of absence to hone his culinary skills. He was nice enough, and was a useful contact in case she needed to know anything about what was going on with Eirika's end of the little royal alliance that had taken hold here.    
  
When she did come close to the hallway where Tana's room was to be found, she moved easily, not wanting to look hurried. A few quick glances in either direction told her that if anyone was looking here, they were hiding themselves very, very well. Content, she reached up and delivered a single knock to the door's wooden surface.    
  
There was a long silence that made Marisa nearly certain that the princess was out. Marisa came very close, in fact, to turning around and walking away. But then, just as she was turning on her heel, Marisa heard a voice both like and unlike Tana's, one that immediately set off alarm bells in her head.    
  
"The Princess of Frelia is not available on this fine morning," the voice said. It had to be Tana, but there was something off, a quality that Marisa had never heard before. "Please come back another time," she said, and then, quashing Marisa's worries and immediately leaving her with only one real theory as to what was going on, the voice giggled.   
  
Marisa blinked once, then -- lifting a necklace over her head and pulling it from behind her shirt and vest -- she grasped a little key between her thumb and forefinger before pushing it into the door's lock and undoing it in one smooth motion. A second later, she was through the open door and swiftly shutting it behind her.    
  
What greeted Marisa was roughly in line with what she had come to expect in the few seconds that had followed that undignified giggle from this end of the door. Tana of Frelia sat at her desk, her long, shapely legs hanging over one arm of her chair as she leaned backwards against the desk itself. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, her usual ponytail undone. It was a look that Marisa had only seen on Tana once before, and the memory of that night rose stark and unwanted in her head. Her lips flattened into a hard line.    
  
The princess was holding a bottle. Jehannan liquor, she recognized in a flash from the label on the bottle, and the thing was nearly half empty.    
  
Fucking hell.   
  
"M...Marisa," Tana said, her voice wobbling on the name. She looked confused for a moment, her nose wrinkling in a way that might have made Marisa's heart flip during the war, before things had changed between them. Don't think about it, she reminded herself. "Marisa, I didn't say that you could...could just come inside, uninvited, un, unasked for. Un...unwanted," Tana added, her eyes seeming to drift, focusing on something else.    
  
"Actually, you did," Marisa said, making herself sound bored. Disconnected. She needed that distance, needed it to be safe, to keep from worrying at the sight of Tana like this. "When we first locked ourselves in this gilded cage, you gave me a key and told me that your home was my own. Remember?" She almost wished she didn't, wished she couldn't recall to mind the complicated feelings that had roiled inside her chest. The only think keeping her from growing genuinely upset was that she had been confronted with a drunken Tana, and her mind wasn't really sure how to react to the sight just yet.    
  
Tana opened her mouth, raising the bottle and holding it out at a distance with one finger lifted from its neck, pointing at Marisa accusatively. Then, she let it curl around the bottle once again. "Oh," she finally said, sounding surprised. "Oh, I think...I think you're right."   
  
"What the hell are you even doing in here?" Marisa asked, crossing the room and taking note of the way things seemed to have been thrown around, left topsy-turvy as if a storm had passed through. "I'm surprised you aren't face down on the ground, with so much of that stuff in you. I probably ought to call Natasha over and have her purge it out of you."   
  
"My mother's long passed, Marisa," Tana said, after a long hesitation. "I don't need you to take her place."    
  
"I'm not mothering you, and if you try to call me mommy, I'll have to take that thing and drink the rest myself to forget." Marisa started to circle the bed, until she could close the distance between them. "Is this about the banquet? How long have you even been awake?"   
  
Tana’s face seemed to darken. "Nothing happened at the banquet," she finally said, her stern response somewhat ruined by the way she seemed to sway slightly to the left in the resulting silence.    
  
"Yes, nothing at all," Tana said, her voice completely flat. She reached out for the bottle and deftly gripped and slipped it from Tana's hands. The princess made a little sound of discontent, but didn't really fight Marisa for it.    
  
Instead, she crossed her legs, one over the other.    
  
This had significantly more effect on Marisa than any kind of effort on Tana's part in keeping the bottle might have. It felt something like a bludgeon to the head.    
  
Marisa had noticed in an instant, of course, as soon as she had walked through the door, but it hadn't really registered with the mercenary until just now that the Princess had never exactly dressed for her day. She was still wearing something only a step up -- a very short step, if not a gently sloping section of ramp -- from a negligee. It was a silk nightie, something pink and frilly that ended just a hair above the mid-thigh, meaning that Marisa was getting a very distracting view.    
  
Oh, she was used to seeing Tana's thighs -- used to trying and failing not to let her eyes linger on them for too long -- but only in a modest way, common to most pegasus knights. The Frelian princess would wear skirts and stockings, and only a portion of her skin would be revealed to the sight of...concerned parties, like Marisa. Even after things had gone awry, and she had tried not to spend quite so much time sighing and fretting over her relationship with a princess she'd never really had a chance with, Marisa had still been quite hopeless when it came to keeping her eyes off of Tana's assets.    
  
And speaking of assets...   
  
Marisa flicked her eyes upward to Tana's face, noting how flushed it was instead of exactly how much cleavage was being revealed -- put on display, more like -- by the low cut of the thing that Tana had worn to bed last night. "You really did have too much. Seriously, just talk to me. This is the banquet, right? The Princess?"   
  
Tana's face only grew darker. "Marisaaa, you don't..." She raised a hand again, one finger pointed upward. "You don't know...a thing. Not even one, Marisa."    
  
"I know you followed your friend around like a puppy for practically the entire war," Marisa said, crossing the room with quick steps to place the bottle on Tana's dresser, then coming back to throw her ass down on the edge of the bed. "Acting like she was the sun and stars but somehow not seeming to get how gay the whole thing was." She said it like it was plain, simple fact. The way she would describe the weather.    
  
Tana's face was as red as a cherry now, and she uncrossed and recrossed her legs in a way that Marisa refused to notice. Then she crossed her arms beneath her breasts in a way that framed them just so, and was basically impossible not to notice without locking her eyes on the ceiling and keeping there. "I don't...you're not...I'm not..." She trailed off, then finally added, "drunk enough for this."   
  
"I'm pretty sure you're past drunk enough for this," Marisa said, her voice devoid of sympathy. "Especially before noon."    
  
"I did not follow Eirika around like, like...some...some dog. I was never the bitch in that camp," Tana said, her voice taking a darker tone.   
  
"Then who was, the Rausten girl?" At Tana's flinch at being understood so clearly, Marisa laughed again. "Tana, you practically crawled around on your hands and knees every day, yipping like a happy mutt and hoping your friend would let you stick your nose up her skirts someday."   
  
Tana was glaring daggers at her, and Marisa didn't precisely blame her. The Jehannan wasn't quite sure why she was being so provocative, why she was trying so hard to push Tana. Why was she so angry?   
  
She knew, of course. She wasn't in denial the way that Tana seemed to be.    
  
The sight of Tana of Frelia like this, drunk in the morning and utterly shattered by whatever had happened last night between Eirika and Tana, stood out in stark contrast against what Marisa had been forced to make of herself during her own heartbreak. She tried not to think of it, had to try desperately not to think of it half the time she was in Tana's presence, but she had suffered through her own sorrows over something like this. Though in her case, it hadn't been rejection, or the sight of the one she was infatuated with in someone else's arms.    
  
It was a wonder that she was able to remain in Innes's service, only her own sterling professionalism and Gerik's example letting Marisa keep herself steady. Innes had taken her aside one day, asked her to come to his tent in the camps at the height of the war. She hadn't known what to think of the summons. She had known that she was not in any kind of trouble, was not facing any kind of discipline, not when she knew with utter certainty that her work had been perfect. Even then, she had been a swordswoman worth fearing and respecting. Now, she was whispered of as a master when she walked within earshot of anyone with knowledge of the sword. No, it hadn't been her work that he would have issue with.   
  
What had worried her, briefly, was that Innes might have wanted something from her himself, whether out of base lust or something deeper. What a tangle that would have been! Marisa herself in thrall to the bright, flitting little thing that had somehow managed to capture her heart, while Innes set his own sights on her from an unseen angle. It would have been a nightmare. It would have been funny, in retrospect.    
  
That hadn't been what he had brought her to his tent for.    
  
_"Your dalliances with my sister end here," the prince had said, not even looking up from the reports he was reading at his little desk. Not even paying Marisa the courtesy of looking her in the eye as he dared -- "I do not know if Tana precisely understands your...feelings for her, but henceforth, any flirtation on your part, anything untoward that might be seen by anyone, that might harm my sister's chances of a good marriage, will result in your expulsion from this army, along with Gerik and the rest of his mercenaries." He did let his eye flick up, but only for an instant, and it was less a sign of any real connection and more just him gauging her reaction. "You will receive a month's pay in the event, but then your professional relationship with Frelia will be at an end. Acknowledged?"_   
  
That nod had been one of the hardest things Marisa had ever done. She had never drawn her blade in anger before -- she was dispassionate on the battlefield, controlled, utterly calm -- but that day, she had had to restrain herself from bringing her sword out and letting it press against Innes's neck, letting it draw a drop of blood, letting him understand exactly where he stood.    
  
But she had done it. She had nodded, for the sake of the company, and then she had left. After that, she had done her best to bottle up whatever feelings she had for the other woman. There was no way at all for her to utterly sever the connection between them, not when Tana was so adamant about spending time with Marisa, going on patrol with her, fighting beside her as an ally in arms. But she controlled herself, kept her feelings at bay, and tried not to let her resentment turn against Tana herself.    
  
Now, though, Marisa found herself resenting. She looked the princess up and down, her lip curling as she watched her cruel words sink in for the other woman.    
  
Tana finally opened her mouth. "F-fine," she said, her facade crumbling. Any hardness in her expression gave way. She raised a hand to wipe away the beginnings of tears. "Fine, M-Marisa." She took a deep, shuddering breath. When she swallowed, her throat bobbed in a way that was actively distracting. "Do you think me weak? A fool? What would you have of me?" She pushed herself up out of the chair after swinging her legs down from its arm. A moment later, she was standing. A bit wobbly, but standing.    
  
"Act like an adult, rather than as a child," Marisa said, her voice more acid than she had meant. She really did feel resentment, even still, and felt a shade of guilt at it...but not much. Of the nobles she had known, only Eirika of Renais had seemed truly worthy of respect. All the rest, even Tana, even when Marisa had been deep in the throes of her infatuation with the girl, had always struck her as half-developed, thin-skinned. Life had not challenged them the way it had challenged commoners, and so when tragedy struck during the war, it was the nobles who seemed the most effected -- as though they were not used to such suffering.    
  
For an adult of Tana's age to be drunk before noon over a spot of heartbreak was simply laughable. Marisa refused to feel sympathy.    
  
Tana stumbled, the lush girl tumbling onto the bed beside where Marisa stood. She rolled onto her back, looking up at Marisa, and once again the Jehannan was powerfully struck by just how much the little slip of a thing revealed. She was torn between wanting to prod the girl into getting her act back together, and...she shook her head even as Tana spoke. "Eirika...I thought of her as mine. M-mine. And now I see that I never had her at all, that I lost my chance. I, I just...I see the way she looks when she thinks of that Rausten whore, and I know that, that she will never look that way for me," Tana said, her voice nearly pleading. "What is wrong with me, that she could never look at me that way? M-Marisa, tell me!"    
  
It was absurd, over-dramatic, overwrought. The girl was sloshed, wasn't thinking clearly, and was half out of her mind with jealousy and despair because her gal pal had fallen into the arms of another woman. Or between her legs, Marisa wasn't sure. She felt a surge of the same resentment and contempt as before. She knew that this situation was unfair to Tana, that it wasn't quite right that Marisa had been the one to arrive here and serve as Tana's lent ear. Tana couldn't know how Marisa had felt, how Marisa still felt in some tiny, less-disciplined corner of her heart. She just thought of Tana as her friend, and was expecting just that.    
  
But Marisa couldn't be the friend that Tana needed. She smiled, the expression no doubt a bit ghastly. "How could anyone not see what is wrong with you, what might drive Eirika to someone else? Stones, Tana, look at you. You're nothing but a weak-willed lush. You're soft, you've always been soft. And you don't even know what the hell it is you want. Is it really that surprising that the Renaitian girl would go for someone a little more driven? I mean, damn. You've never offered her a thing."   
  
The hurt in Tana's still-unfocused eyes should have stopped Marisa in her tracks, made her feel worse, but instead Marisa felt a sick little thrill at the way the other woman seemed to shrink back. "I, I was her friend! I didn't realize --"   
  
"Exactly, you didn't realize." Marisa felt something swelling in her, something hot and intense that had been building for years, since that moment in Innes's tent. Something feverish, something that had only grown stronger with every moment that Tana had oh-so-caringly played the part of a friend, the part that was anything but what Marisa had yearned for from the other woman. "You've been flying blind. Maybe you need to get down to earth, get in touch with things, learn what the hell it is you really want."    
  
Tana had seemed to grow more and more confused as the moments passed, as Marisa's words seemed to flow against her unendingly. But now she licked her lips. "What...what do you mean? What should I do?"   
  
Marisa rolled her eyes, then finally did the forbidden. She leaned over the bed, bracing herself over Tana, her knees pressing against the bed to either side of where Tana's legs were dangling off its edge. Tana looked shocked, color blooming in her face again. "You're sad because your crush is with another girl. You know what most people do to get that out of their system?" Marisa lifted her skirt, then pulled her underwear down and out of the way. In an instant, the urges and feelings she had been keeping pent up since she had walked into the room and seen Tana in her morning finest were utterly exposed.    
  
The princess of Frelia looked at Marisa in utter, blank shock.    
  
Marisa had never shown this side of her to Tana, had always been very careful at any time when there was even a chance of nudity between them. Tana's pegasus knights, she had learned early in the war, tended to bathe together when bathing was possible, and Tana had invited her more than once to share in that habit, a startling suggestion that had been part of what had made Marisa seriously consider making a proposition of the sort that Innes had so very feared at that time. And in truth, her following them to the river near where the army made camp had only further complicated Marisa's muddled thoughts on whether it was a good idea or a bad one to pursue Tana of Frelia.    
  
The pegasus knights' utter lack of modesty in one another's' presence was how Marisa had learned that she was not the only woman blessed with a cock in the camp: Vanessa had sported one quite shamelessly, bathing herself in her wing-sisters' presence with seemingly no real worry at all as to how they might react, or how her own physical reaction to their presence might shock them. It had made Marisa consider that Tana might be used to the idea of a woman who had a cock rather than the alternative. Marisa had faced more than her fair share of shocked and disgusted reactions from the women she had shown all of herself to over the years. She wouldn't have to fear that, not from Tana's quarter...   
  
But in the end, things had gone the way they had. But the look on Tana's face wasn't one of horror or disgust, or even of real shock, outside of the shock of being confronted with Marisa's privates in the first place.   
  
It was closer to awe, and Marisa felt a flicker of satisfaction in her chest to be so regarded. Her cock was simply her cock, and she had never really thought of it as large or small, but of the few lovers she had managed to take, all had seemed very much satisfied with the scope of what she had on offer. Tana didn't seem to be an exception.    
  
"I asked you a question," Marisa said, her voice still a little harsh, and the sound jolted Tana out of whatever reverie the other woman had sunk into.    
  
"I..." Tana licked her lips, still looking at Marisa's shaft, and Marisa wondered if the princess would be so shameless in her regard for a cock if she was fully sober. "I do not know."   
  
"They find someone else, and they fuck until they aren't so sad anymore. They find something nice and fun and meaningless on the rebound, and they ride that high as long and hard as they can." Marisa gave her respectably lengthy shaft a slow stroke up and down, precum beading at its tip. "Really, it's not that complicated. But I guess you're good at not noticing things, so I don't mind explaining it to you."   
  
Tana's face flushed with anger, but there was some transparent arousal there too, in the way her lips were parted, in the way her eyes were a little dilated with lust. She looked just as aware as Marisa felt of the fact that Marisa's cock wasn't all that far from the junction of Tana's thighs. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Her face grew redder.   
  
"It's up to you, noble girl. But I don't mind showing you a good time if it keeps you out of the bottle. That's what a good friend would do after all." She lingered on that hateful 'friend' just a hair too long, though she doubted that Tana was sober enough to understand. "I think you like the look of my cock though. Just say yes and you don't have to think about Eirika at all."   
  
Tana seemed on the verge of blurting out some panicked refusal, more out of sheer reflex at the impropriety of it than anything else, right up until Marisa's last words. Then, a long exhalation escaped her, and she shuddered. "I...I don't want to have to feel this way," Tana said, and it was nearly a moan by the end. She stared at Marisa's cock. "I don't want to think about Eirika...or her...I don't want to think at all..."   
  
"I promise you won't have to think at all," Marisa said, her lips curling into a smile as things took the turn they did. She wanted to grin, wanted to howl her satisfaction at what was happening, but she knew that might break the spell that the two of them seemed to be under. Knew that it might make Tana change her mind at the last second. So instead, she threw herself onto the bed, making Tana yelp.    
  
In a moment, Marisa was straddling Tana, her thighs spread to either side of the other girl, Marisa's hands reaching down and yanking the upper edge of the negligee down to let Tana's breasts spill free. "Well, then," she breathed out. “These are just as plush and pretty and  _soft_ as the rest of you,” Marisa said after fulfilling a long-held fantasy and giving Tana’s stacked chest a firm squeeze.   
  
"S-stones, Marisa," Tana panted out, shocked by the way that Marisa's still-exposed cock had slapped itself down between her breasts as Marisa continued to squeeze them. "I, this isn't...nnhgh..."   
  
"A plush, pretty thing like you, stones, I almost think your tits were made for something like this," Marisa said, voicing a long-held admiration for Tana's chest tinged, like all of her thoughts were at this moment, with a kind of vicious bitterness. "No, screw the almost. They were." And then, still grasping Tana's breasts, she pushed them together with both hands and began to thrust between them with her cock.    
  
"M-Marisa, what are you --" She let out a whimpering moan as Marisa began to rub at her nipples with both thumbs, her fingers occasionally squeezing Tana's breasts as she thrust between them with real urgency. "Oh, what is this, this is so...this isn't like anything I've ever thought..."   
  
"Of course you didn't," Marisa said with bite, "of course a perfect, pure princess with an oh-so-sheltered upbringing wouldn't even know what a titjob is. That's why I'm making this first one easy for you, since I doubt your soused little head could wrap itself around how it works." She was sinking deeper into a genuinely cruel persona, long-held anger at the system that Innes represented and that Tana was blamelessly a part of redirecting itself at the blue-haired beauty she had longed for for months and then years on end.    
  
Tana let out a desperate whine at the way Marisa was stimulating her breasts, clearly unsure of how to handle any of this. Behind Marisa, Tana's hips gave a little twitch, as she could easily notice from the way it made the bed shake. Tana's hands bunched themselves up in the material of the bedding, her fingers curling into the soft comforter beneath her.    
  
Atop her, Marisa just vented all of her need and frustration, thrusting her increasingly slick cock between Tana's similarly lubricated breasts. Jehannans were blessed with a degree of virility above and beyond that of the other nations of Magvel, and that meant more of everything -- more cum, to be sure, but also more precum. So much was oozing from Marisa's tip as she continued to fuck Tana's expansive cleavage that it left her cock and the other woman's breasts thoroughly slick in very little time at all, and soon her cock was pistoning between the two mounds with extreme vigor.   
  
Tana's eyes, occasionally unfocused from drink, still managed to lock onto the wetness flowing from Tana's cock's tip every time it emerged only to disappear back between Tana's tits. She looked shocked at the amount of it, and Marisa smirked harder at the way Tana's tongue eased forward to wet her lips before drawing back. Tana's interest was transparent, her thirst for something she didn't even truly understand growing.    
  
And then everything about Tana's expression was blotted out, interest and desire and confusion, all of it, by a sudden, warning-free spurt of hot cum that caught her full across the face. And then another. And then another.    
  
Marisa let out a desperate groan as the climax hit her, as the blessing and, occasionally, curse of Jehanna took hold. As if to put up a fight against the barren nature of their homeland, Jehannans were spectacularly fruitful, and Marisa, like everyone else from her country, had always had a tendency to climax rather liberally throughout any sexual encounter, or even while enjoying the touch of her own hand. "Nn, hah, nngh --" She continued to thrust between Tana's breasts, giving them a desperate, slightly painful squeeze as jet after jet of her cum practically exploded across Tana's face.    
  
The other woman had let out a shocked cry at the start of it, but now that wasn't even possible, not when spurt after spurt of blazing hot spunk caught her in the mouth any time she tried to open it. In seconds, Tana's unfocused eyes were closed against the onslaught, and her mouth was literally full of Marisa's cum. Marisa watched as the girl took a desperate breath in through her nose, watched her eyes open again as the spurts finally stilled , watched a mixture of terrible desire and something like betrayal warring in Tana's eyes.    
  
And then, the girl swallowed, left with little alternative in the face of just how much cum was coating Tana's face and how much had pooled in her mouth.    
  
Marisa wished she could preserve the look on Tana's face as the girl swallowed, her delicate throat bobbing with the effort of it, with just how much cum there was for Tana to have to struggle to get down. Marisa didn't think she was particularly impressive when it came to her output; it simply was the way of Jehanna. The sands had made her people hardy, both as individuals and in their capability to continue the Jehannan line.    
  
The thought came to her, heady and exciting and wicked, that she might manage to continue it here. Let Innes say what he liked, when faced with the prospect of a Tana heavy with a Jehannan mercenary's brat. She grinned hungrily down at her.    
  
She had spoken truer than she had imagined, Marisa thought. Tana wasn't the only one who would benefit with this particular bout of rebound sex. Tana wasn't the only one who had things to forget.    
  
When Tana had finally finished swallowing, she raised both hands from the bed to wipe the cum that had become slathered, thick and clinging, to her features. When her face was revealed once more, she looked -- well, her expression was a ridiculous comingling of fury and sheer, open arousal. "I, M-Marisa, you could have warned me --" Slurring her words slightly, she shook her head. "You, you should have, should have told me what was coming --"   
  
"Oh, you plush Frelian cream puff, if I stopped to start setting off warning flares every time I got off, we'd be here forever," Marisa said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll just give you a nice little blanket warning that by the time we’re done here, you’ll  _really_ be looking like one of those over-sugared pastries you fat Frelians love so much. Too much, by the way these tits were jiggling.”    
  
It was a mean jab, cruel and untrue besides, with how tightly Marisa had been clutching Tana’s tits, but she saw the strike find its mark. Tana’s face grew flushed behind the remaining streaks of cum that had been left when she had scooped Marisa’s first load away with her hands, which she was wiping on the covers for a lack of anywhere better to clean herself.    
  
Marisa almost wanted to warn her of just how pointless a gesture it was, when she really, truly was going to leave Tana well and truly coated in her seed by the time the day was done.    
  
If she didn’t keep the princess here until nightfall, that was.    
  
O O O   
  
Marisa gave the princess's ass a nice, hard smack with one hand as she used the other -- her fingers slathered in her own cum -- to slowly finger Tana's asshole. The other woman writhed beneath her, both from how clearly unused she was to anal penetration, and from the unexpected blow. "Honestly, every inch of you is just as lush as the rest, Tana. I don't know how that mount of yours manages to stay in the sky," she said, punctuating her words by instead giving Tana's ass a nice, firm squeeze a moment later. With her blue hair spread all around her on the bed, and sweat already coursing down her back, Tana of Frelia let out the kind of moan that Marisa had once daydreamed of extracting from her.    
  
"That, that isn't true," she said, her voice still a little slurred in the wake of so much drink. She would definitely be feeling the hangover in a few hours, Marisa knew for certain, if she wasn't passed out in the wake of what Marisa was going to do to her between now and then. "You're, you're being m-mean, Marisa...I thought you were my, m-my-my f-frieeeaaah, AAHAHN --"    
  
Marisa grinned down, even though she knew that Tana couldn't see her expression. The other woman hadn't been expecting it, that curl of her fingers, or for Marisa to yank them out so forcefully a moment later. She braced herself above the other woman, relishing the shape of her. The things she was saying really weren't true or kind, but she wanted very badly, despite her locked-away best intentions, to make Tana hurt. She knew it wasn't fair, knew that Tana was already hurting, but, fuck it, Tana wouldn't remember most of this in the morning anyway.    
  
"Just a frosted-over pastry, plump and fluffy like something your daddy would scarf down," Marisa said, moving both hands to grip Tana's ass cheeks and spread them apart as she moved to push her cock head against the other girl's asshole. "And oh, look at this, it's your creme filling, Tana. Not that a girl like you needs to get any heavier."    
  
Tana actually let out a sniffle, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the moan that followed a moment later as Marisa's cock head started to spread her rear entrance wide. "Don't talk about h-him right now...oh, Mari, Marisa, Ma-Ma, Marisa, it's too much, it's too muuuuch..."   
  
"I told you not to call me your mother," Marisa said wickedly, and then started to ease forward, started to push down, started to let her cock slide inch by inch into Tana's already lubed-up rear end.    
  
"Oh, oh, oh god, oh god, yes, Marisa, Marisa, my Marisa, help me f-forghhhhnnnnnHNNNN!" Tana's hips bucked as the girl, pushed closer and closer to the edge by what had happened so far, finally climaxed without so much as a finger brushed against her cunt.   
  
"You royal types really do have hair triggers," Marisa said dismissively, pulling back only an inch before pushing even further, driving Tana that little bit wilder. "I swear, I could already tell you people were letting yourselves go, but you really need to get your acts together." And then, without any further waiting, Marisa slammed the last few inches of her cock home, hilting herself in Tana's ass. "There you go, jiggling again like a dollop of fatty, sugary creme."    
  
"I, I'm not, you're so, hnnh!" Tana's whine turned into something that was very nearly a scream as Marisa began to settle into a groove of pulling back only to thrust forward again, hilting and re-hilting her cock in Tana's tight ass again and again. "It's so good!"   
  
"Your ass is what's good, sugar girl," Marisa said, reaching down and grasping a handful of Tana's hair before yanking it back, making Tana cry out in a delicious mixture of pain and excitement. "I don't care if you can sit your horse or not, fat-bottomed girls like you are where it's at."    
  
"Stop -- talking -- that -- way --" Tana's voice was tight with the effort of speaking at all , the effort of not dissolving into cries of passion as Marisa railed her. "You're, you're my friend, so help me -- stop -- "    
  
Stop hurting, Marisa knew instinctively was what Tana meant. Her mouth twisted. She wanted to yank back harder on Tana's hair, but didn't. She resisted that urge. There was such a thing as going too far, and Tana hadn't really done anything.    
  
She hadn't done anything other than being herself.    
  
Growling, Marisa threw herself harder into the ass-fucking that she had already been so forcefully giving to her friend, knowing that her feelings, the ones she had so forcefully stuffed down into the depths of her heart, were starting to creep out in spite of how harsh she was being. In spite of her resentment, in spite of how angry she felt at the other woman, she still felt...she still…   
  
It was a relief when, only minutes into Tana’s first bout of anal sex, Marisa spent herself again, spurt after spurt of a heat that made Tana’s toes curl against the bedspread pouring deeper and deeper into Tana’s ass. “Oh,” Tana said, her voice shocked, almost in awe. “Oh, oh, o-oh Marisa...that’s…” She whined the sound nearly turning to a sob.    
  
“I  _told_ you I was going to give you a nice, warm creme filling,  _Princess_ ,” Marisa spat out, her harshness tempered by...by something. By something she wanted to shy away from. Damn it. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you this time. And don’t worry, I won’t put it all in the same place.”   
  
Tana, breathing exhaustedly, suddenly turned her head from the bed to look up past her shoulder. “W-what?” she asked, her eyes unfocused and confused-looking.   
  
O O O   
  
Tana’s hands were once again tangled up in the bedspread beneath her as she let out a scream of pure, animal pleasure.    
  
The Frelian princess's thighs were spread outward to either side, her eyes locked on the woman on top of her as Marisa slammed into her cunt with a kind of fervor that she knew the princess couldn't possibly have been expecting, couldn't be used to, couldn't endure without some part of her mind slipping away. Tana was too sheltered, too protected by her piece of shit of an older brother to have been with anyone this way, Marisa doubted she'd ever felt anything other than a toy. And Marisa knew that she was reaching far deeper past Tana's folds than any toy could manage.    
  
"Oh, oh Marisa, oh, it's, you're --" Tana shook her head back and forth, tears springing from her eyes, and Marisa felt a surge of tenderness that did nothing to slow her down as she continued to plow the princess with all the ferocity that had been building up in her for years. "So much, so big, I don't, how does anyone, I can't handle, ohhhhhnnnngh!" Again, the princess climaxed, her hips bucking even as Marisa slammed the other woman down against the bed again and again.    
  
"Stones, I could watch those fat tits of yours jiggle all day, Tana," Marisa said, still keeping up the front that she needed so badly. She needed that shield, needed a mask of meanness, of pettiness. Needed it to protect herself against the tenderness that was welling up inside her. "Your whole body is quaking. You're like, what, a flan?"   
  
"Marisa!" Tana screamed out, indignation and bliss tangled up in one another as they escaped her throat. "Why are you being like --" Tana bit her lip as Marisa reached down to grip her sides, squeezing the not-quite-ample but certainly-soft flesh there.    
  
"Honestly, Tana, look at me feeling up these love handles of yours and tell me you aren't...hhhaah...just like every other Frelian out there..." Tana shook her head, biting her lip still, but Marisa laughed down at her. "You're just a plump little flan, Tana. Well, maybe not little, but --"   
  
She was cut off as Tana wrapped both of her shapely, well-muscled -- despite Marisa's vicious teasing -- legs around Marisa's waist. It left her with no escape, no chance of pulling out, as if Marisa ever would have in the first place.    
  
"J-just...just shut up and...fill me up with that Jehannan seed, i-if you won't let me have more Jehannan drink." Tana tilted her suddenly scarlet face to the side, as if she too couldn't imagine that she had just said what she had -- Marisa certainly couldn't. But her eyes flicked over to Marisa's a moment later, and Marisa could tell that the princess was gauging her reaction. Maybe she was trying to give a little bit of dirty talk a try, after hearing so much leveled her way by the Jehannan mercenary.    
  
If she was, it was definitely working. If it had been possible for her to get harder, Marisa no doubt would have. As it was, with Tana's legs locked around her waist, Marisa began to throw herself into the fucking she was delivering to Tana's cunt with a kind of fervor she hadn't know that she had in her. She slammed down again and again, her cock twitching as Marisa came closer and closer to a climax that, for once, she wanted desperately to delay. She wanted to bring her Frelian pastry princess to the edge as best she could, wanted to make it so that they could cum together. It was a shameful thought, not for being dirty but for being very nearly romantic, something that Marisa still wanted desperately to shy away from.    
  
But there wasn't any escape for her, was there, with Tana's legs wrapped around her so tightly?    
  
"I won't make any promises on the former," Marisa finally said, grinning slightly, "but I can definitely deliver on the latter. Just don't come complaining to me when your brother has a hissy fit because I defiled his little sister so thoroughly."   
  
"O-oh, don't talk about him, ei-either -- oh -- Marisa --!" And suddenly, by the way Marisa started to tighten around her, and by the way her eyes started to roll back in her head, Marisa knew that Tana was right where she wanted her.    
  
In one last, powerful thrust, Marisa slammed down, then released everything she had been keeping pent up for so long. Not her bitterness -- it couldn't go away so easily - but the desperate onrush of seed, the heavy climax that Marisa had been holding back with all of her strength and resistance. She let it all go, poured ounce after ounce of Jehannan cum into Tana's pretty pink Frelian pussy, creaming it just like she had Tana's ass. "Take it, t-take it, you swelled-up s-slut --"    
  
Tana might have responded, had she been capable of speech. As it was, she let out a guttural moan as cum began to overflow from her pussy, as it began to ooze down her thighs and ass to pool on the bed beneath her.    
  
O O O    
  
Marisa wasn't sure how much time had passed. It was certainly past noon. The sun was getting low on the horizon. She hadn't been counting her climaxes, either.    
  
There had been a lot, though.    
  
"M-Marisa," Tana breathed out. She tried to crawl forward on the bed, her hands slipping briefly on the bedspread as they failed to find purchase. It wasn't hard to see why. The cum that Marisa had spilled so thoroughly and repeatedly had formed quite the puddle beneath them both. Tana's knees and shins were coated in it, as were her hands and forearms. Her tits were slathered in cum from when Tana had pushed her down with one foot against Tana's neck, getting a precise angle to slam her cock into Tana's ass more forcefully, leaving Tana's face and tits pressed firmly to the ground.    
  
Now, all Marisa was doing was gripping Tana's hips and slamming into her cunny once more, plowing the already well-fucked -- amazingly well-fucked, judging by the cum coating every inch of Tana's thighs, from where it had overflowed from Tana's pussy -- princess again and again. Her hands gripped Tana's hips forcefully, but she wasn't trying to inflict pain. She was just being careful not to let Tana escape.    
  
"I'm, Marisa, that's...that's enough..." Tana again tried to crawl forward, tried to reach forward and get a grip of the bed beyond the puddle beneath her. And her fingers did find purchase there, for a moment. She got her hands tight around that bit of bedspread and began to pull herself forward.    
  
Only for Marisa, her powerful grip and Jehannan muscle serving her well, to drag Tana back without so much as an ounce of apology or mercy. "No," she said, her voice exhausted.   
  
"Marisa , we've been at this for -- my head hurts, and --" Tana let out a whimper, her thighs quaking for a moment and her pussy muscles flexing and tensing around Marisa's cock as she climaxed yet again. "Marisa, it's so much, it's been too much --"    
  
"You said..." Marisa slowed down for only a few moments, slowed down so that the blissed-out, fucked-silly princess beneath her could understand without a hint of doubt what was being said. "You said that you wanted me to make you forget. That you wanted me to make you forget her. Forget them. Forget how sad you felt."   
  
Tana let out a shuddering breath. "I, I was wrong to, to indulge in drink, and to -- Marisa, you were r-right, I won't be sad about Eirika anymore, I --" She let out a yelp as Marisa slammed into her with as much force and vigor as she had used at any time before then.    
  
Her hands still gripping Tana’s hips, Marisa leaned down further and further over Tana, her own rather modest breasts pressing against the other woman’s back. Tana turned her head to look up past her shoulder at Marisa, and Marisa had to fight the urge, a powerful one, to seize the other girl’s lips, make this everything she wanted it to be. Maybe she should have. Maybe that would have been better, healthier, more honest.    
  
Afterward, Marisa would think back on it, and wonder if that honesty, that tenderness, would have changed the course of things.    
  
But in the moment, instead, Marisa leaned down and said, “You can still remember her name. That means we  _aren’t done yet._ ”    
  
Tana let out a little, thrilled gasp, a mixture of excitement and horror. “Marisa, I --” She let out a shocked little scream as Marisa slammed down into her, hard. “Marisa! Ma, Ma --”   
  
“If you say that one more time I’ll --” Marisa continued to slam into her, dragging her backward even further, so that Tana’s tits and face were dragged through the puddle of warm cum beneath her. Tana let out a shocked noise, her breath burbling up through the cum and forming bubbles Marisa resisted the urge to grip her by the hair and push her deeper into it.    
  
Instead, Marisa swept her hand through the puddle, collecting Tana’s utterly cum-drenched hair into one thick, heavy braid in one hand. She yanked back hard on it, pulling Tana’s face out of the puddle of cum and leaving the other woman gasping and sputtering for breath.    
  
She slammed into Tana, threw herself against the other woman like it was everything she had ever wanted. Because it was. Maybe not like this, maybe not this exact way, but she had desperately wanted to be with her, and now those old feelings had comingled and dissolved into her more bitter, angry, vicious ones. It was a potent cocktail, a dangerous brew, and it had led her to this.    
  
“Every inch of you is covered in creme,” she grunted out, “every jiggling inch of that slutty body of yours, Tana. I can’t believe you thought what’s-her-name was ever going to go for you in the first place. Imagine the scandal.”    
  
Tana wiped her face with one hand, and Marisa reached out with a darting grip to seize that hand and guide it back to Tana’s face. “Swallow it.”   
  
Tana turned her head back for an instant, before Marisa yanked her hair back forcefully, making her cry out. At the same time, she delivered a particularly intense thrust. “Oh, stones…” And then Tana tilted her hand back, and Marisa watched with eager, hot eyes as her own cum oozed down Tana’s palm and down to Tana’s lips.    
  
“You can’t expect me to do all the work,” Marisa said, hilting herself in Tana again just in time to release several heavy spurts of hot cum into the Frelian girl. She released Tana’s hair, and the woman abruptly fell forward, her body splashing into the puddle all over again. “You’ll have to do a little bit of the filling if we want you to be a proper frosted-up, creme-pumped slut, Tana. No, we aren’t anywhere near done. And when we are, there won’t be room for silly things like other girls’ names.”    
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please consider [following me at my Twitter](https://twitter.com/cathedralvelvet)!


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